Every weekend, millions of Pakistanis watch founders walk into a room, pitch their businesses, and either walk out with crores of rupees or walk out with nothing. What they don’t see is the machine behind it: two years of negotiation with Sony, a casting process engineered for screen presence and investment acumen in equal measure, valuation coaching happening between takes, and a production format where no episode is ever shot in the order it airs.

That machine belongs to Usman, the producer who finally brought the world’s biggest pitch format to Pakistan after more than a decade of failed attempts by others. And the machine is working. Saraaf, a B2B commodity sourcing platform, just closed the largest deal in the global history of Shark Tank on his show, raising over Rs. 1.5 billion and surpassing the previous franchise high of $2.5 million. The company took Rs. 800 million for a 20% equity stake and a Rs. 700 million line of credit at a 3% royalty, and is now positioning itself to become Asia’s largest B2B commodity sourcing platform, connecting Central and South Asian goods in onyx, marble, cotton, lead, and LPG to global markets.

For a show barely halfway through its first season, it’s an emphatic answer to every skeptic who said the format wouldn’t translate.

In this conversation with Dealbeat.ink, Usman takes us under the hood of the deal-making engine he built, from cold-calling reluctant billionaires to teaching founders how to value their own companies the night before they went on camera.

The Sharks

On the long road to getting Sony’s “yes”

“I have a solid background in media licensing. I’ve been helping international studios market their IPs in Pakistan for four or five years before actually bringing Shark Tank. Apart from that, I’ve launched my own independent entrepreneurial ventures. Some worked, some failed, that’s life. I also have on-ground production experience, and I’m an entrepreneur in residence at a New York venture capital firm. So I have that venture background too. This mix of starting a business, media licensing, and venture, I think was made in heaven for someone who could possibly bring Shark Tank to Pakistan.

I was actually approached by a friend I was working very closely with. He was the head of an international studio and said, ‘Usman, is there a way we could do Shark Tank in Pakistan?’ I told him we could explore it. At the time, India hadn’t happened yet. I thought this is a very big show, Pakistani audiences won’t watch it.

Then the Indian version launched and things got crazy. We saw the success. A lot of Pakistani audience was already consuming Shark Tank India. That’s when I realized this could work here too.

The Sony process took a good one and a half to two years. That’s how long it took me to convince them to trust me with their prized format. It’s highly prestigious, and they’re very particular with the people they work with. Once that happened, I established a team locally. I have a great team. I could not have done it alone. Nobody can. Then we took it to market, went to advertisers, and found a broadcaster that supported us in bringing this to life.”

The multi-layered puzzle of putting a show like this together

“This is one of the trickiest shows to put together because there are so many silos. You have the sharks, the entrepreneurs, the production, and then you have to stitch it all together. On top of that you layer how you market it, how you finance it, how it’s distributed. It’s a very multi-layered process.”

On convincing rich Pakistanis to admit they’re rich, on national television

“It’s so funny that with Shark Tank, you have to go to rich people. Especially in a country like Pakistan, where you don’t want people to know that you have lots of money. And then you have to tell them: you need to invest money, on mainstream media. I’m not paying you, but you’ll probably be famous.

That was a curve. When I first reached out, a lot of them didn’t believe Shark Tank Pakistan was actually coming. For the past decade, people had been trying to do this. So their reaction was, here’s another guy who just came up and said he’s doing Shark Tank. The first conversation was just me convincing them: yes, it’s happening, it’s the original Shark Tank, it’s the franchise. Once they got the hang of it, it became relatively easy.”

On casting the sharks

“There are many metrics. Some are superficial, which we know is important for television. The other is investment acumen. Those two things combined are the core.

Screen presence, the way they talk, how presentable they are, how they look on screen, plus how genuinely they want to invest. Luckily, I was able to nail that down. You never get anything 100%, but I think I got it just right.

The first time I saw them all sitting together was at NIC during rehearsals, before the set was ready. When they did a trial pitch, I thought: okay, these guys will look good on screen. This is television. You talk to them, you get a vibe, you understand who they are and what their intent is.”

On why he refused to copy Shark Tank India

“India is the benchmark, but if you try to exactly copy-paste what they’re doing, that’s when you mess up. Pakistanis respond differently. If somebody on screen is too blunt, it won’t land the same way. If we had put someone like Ashneer on Shark Tank Pakistan, on paper it would have looked like great content. But people would have rejected it. They do cross-comparisons and react accordingly.

Shark Tank, as Sony’s global consultant Arch Tyson told me, and he’s become a mentor, is a comedy show, a drama show, an emotional show, a serious show, and a business show. It’s everything. If you can put those things together the right way, you have a great show.”

Finding television-ready businesses in a skeptical market

“When we started taking registrations, the initial response was, ‘Is this even real? If we apply, will it even work?’ Once applications started coming in and the hype went real, the interest spiked.

Even then, finding television-ready businesses was very challenging. We had to seek help from incubation centers, source from them as well, which created a pool of people who knew about business and also knew how to present. A lot of businesses that stayed skeptical and didn’t apply, I think in the future they will. That’s season two’s supply.”

The number one problem they had during the show was valuations, he shares. On the first day of the show, not a single deal came through, because people weren’t valuing their businesses correctly. On the second day, he started sitting with everyone and helping them with the math. “We don’t dictate anything. We say: listen, these are your numbers, this is what looks like a good valuation, this is what you should ask. Because we want you to get investment. Some founders were really stubborn. I’d say, okay, you can leave. And when they came back out, they’d say, this happened, that happened. I’d tell them: if you’re asking for money, justify it.”

On the production secret behind the identical wardrobes

“Shark Tank is never shot in episodic format. We record in pitches, four or five pitches a day. Because nothing is scripted, one day I could have five investments made, another day zero, another day two out of five. So the wardrobe question everyone asks, why is it the same? Here’s the secret. When shooting is done, we put the pitches into episodic format with a mix of investments won and lost. If an episode were all rejections, you’d think nothing happens on the show. If it were all wins, you’d lose the education of watching a founder walk away empty-handed and understanding why.”

On casting for story, not just business

“It all starts with casting. When I see someone’s audition, I’m asking: is the story impactful? Is there a comedic aspect? A pure entertainment aspect? A learning aspect? Sometimes I’ll look at a form and think, I know exactly why this person won’t get an investment. But I want the audience to know why.

So when people talk about the ‘tension’ being built, it’s created at the casting level. I already know how a founder’s story or personality is going to impact the shoot. Then on television, a 40-minute pitch becomes a 10-minute pitch. You get the best of it, combined with music, and that’s what you see.”

On why a reality show might be Pakistan’s best business school

“This show is the most powerful tool to actually propagate financial education in Pakistan. Nobody likes to sit through a boring MBA class. The masses either don’t have access, or they look at financial education and say, this is too complicated, too boring.

What this show does is reverse-engineer the education through entertainment. When viewers hear the word equity, they go and search for it. They hear P&L, gross margins, EBITDA, they do the self-learning. In my very first session with the sharks, I told them: you have to teach Pakistan P&L in the first season. It’s basically bite-sized education, like shorts of education, sprinkled in. You have explainers built into the show. There’s a third eye, Junaid and Rabeel, who break down concepts: equity is this, EBITDA is this. If viewers don’t understand, they search. And for audiences who never even thought about being in business, the human stories pull them in. That suspense is what engages them.”

Shark Tank Pakistan quickly became the talk at universities, among college students. People started talking more and more about business, investments and fundraising. They’re getting hope that they will get money if they try. Investments are happening. Success stories are on television. Every age demographic, college kids, people in their 40s, 50s, 60s, starting businesses, making money. Any business that appears on Shark Tank, even if they don’t get the investment, and this is true across the globe, gets a hockey-stick increase in sales. Your revenue goes up, your brand equity goes up. Then it’s on the founder to capitalize on it.”

On what the Sharks taught him

“Spending time with the sharks, you really get to understand the other side. How they think, what they look for in businesses, who they are as people. That was one of the greatest experiences for me, getting to know them.

My best part of the day during the recording was reaching the set in the morning and chatting with the founders. I used to learn so much from them.”

“The first brief I gave everyone was: I want representation from every part of Pakistan. This is Pakistan’s show. So you’ll see people from the most remote areas. Two kids came from a place with no network. They traveled two hours just to get a signal to coordinate with production.

We had founders come all the way from Balochistan and get investments. From interior Sindh, from Punjab. The fancy tech founders are there, yes, but so are people who could never have dreamed of getting access to these investors. And now they have that access.”

On the Gen Z supply problem (that’s actually an opportunity)

“Pakistan’s startup ecosystem is fairly nascent. We still have very few avenues of getting good data on what’s going on in the market. But I see a lot of Gen Z starting new businesses. This is a generation that’s very hard to employ, they don’t want to do jobs, they all want to start businesses. That’s where our supply side comes from.”

On the leak problem

“The audition phase is highly confidential. We have specific partners, we conduct auditions there, we finalize, and we tell applicants not to announce whether they’ve been selected. In season one, some people started posting on LinkedIn before they appeared on the show. That’s bad for us, and honestly, that kind of thing can get you disqualified. Once the episode airs, if people want to talk about it, that’s good for us.”

His advice to founders

“Please don’t come to us at the idea stage. An idea on paper with you saying ‘I need investment’ isn’t enough.

Check your valuations. If you’re a consumer brand, don’t put a tech valuation on yourself. Get your data right, because that’s the number one reason investors pull back. Be succinct with your story and be data-driven. Investors aren’t just putting in capital, they’re putting their name with you. They want solid founders who know their math and can go through adversity. Even if you have a good business, if you’re all over the place, they’ll pass.”

“The most rewarding part is when I go to universities and kids come up to me and say, thank you, Usman bhai, for bringing this. They see hope for the first time. All they’ve been seeing is negativity. Pakistan is going bankrupt. There’s no money here. Every graduating student is planning how to leave the country because they see money outside.

But the reality is, given the population size here, the opportunity, if marketed right, is wide open. The timing, by Allah’s grace, has been incredibly lucky. People are responding, people are loving it. It was said in Pakistan that no one would watch educated content. The show is proving otherwise.”