Shark Tank Fame Medial Shuts Down Amid Mounting Cash Crunch

Startup-focused social networking platform Medial is winding down its operations, its founder and CEO Niket Raj Dwivedi announced today in a post on LinkedIn.

The “difficult decision” to shut down came after the startup failed to raise fresh funding amid a mounting cash crunch. As per a person familiar with the development, it was struggling to find a monetisation channel. 

As per Dwivedi, the decision came after attempting to build an online community for founders, startup employees and investors across India.

As per the founder, Medial reached more than 5 Lakh users, and expanded to over 30 countries. He also claimed that several startups built on the platform later went on to raise funding and appear on the television show.

“We might not have timed it well,” Dwivedi said.

The founder did not disclose the timeline for the wind down process or what would happen to the platform’s users and data.

The shutdown comes as a sharp reversal for the startup, which was in advanced talks to raise a $4 -5 Mn Series A round from existing investor OG Capital and two VC firms last year.

Founded in 2023 by Dwivedi, Aishwarya Raj Pandey, Harsh Dwivedi and Prateek Kaien, Medial initially positioned itself as a networking platform for founders, operators, investors and startup professionals before expanding its offering with startup news aggregation and community-led discovery features. 

The startup pitched itself as a “high-signal” alternative to traditional social media platforms.

Earlier last year, Medial appeared on Shark Tank India, where it secured a deal from OYO founder Ritesh Agarwal. 

Riding on the visibility from the show, Medial launched a premium subscription offering that included VC and grant trackers, accelerator and incubator databases, startup jobs and exclusive content. 

At the time, investor OG Capital had said Medial’s premium subscribers were renewing at a rate of 65% to 70%, and projected that the startup could turn profitable within 12 months.

The startup had also claimed that its user base had grown 10X over the previous year while average engagement on the platform had increased sixfold. 

It had last raised $500K in a pre-seed funding round from OG Capital in December 2025.

The closure also comes amid a challenging market for Indian social networking startups. 

While players such as Grapevine continue to focus on professional communities, others have struggled to find sustainable business models. Hood, for instance, pivoted to matchmaking under the brand Knot.Dating, after multiple iterations of its product.

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