Moonji founder Abilasha Bhohi says she was ‘done’ with her dairy-free ice cream business before Dragons’ Den came calling.
Abilasha was the final entrepreneur to pitch on tonight’s episode to guest judge Tinie Tempah and regular Dragons Peter Jones, Touker Suleyman, Deborah Meaden and Steven Bartlett.
Tinie and Jones agreed to jointly invest £75,000 for 30% of her business – twice what she offered.
But for an unbelievable sequence of events, she would never have graced our screens.
Abilasha said on Instagram that she’d sold all her equipment and had no money left in her accounts after making the biggest loss to date with Moonji.
“I literally had no way of producing any ice cream,” she said in a video.
Abilasha had seen the email from producers of the legendary BBC pitching show but was ready to throw in the towel as she flew out to a retreat in Mexico for her 30th birthday.
“I ignored it (the email). I’d just hit the lowest point in my business and had quietly decided I was done,” she wrote on the Insta post.
However on the plane, she wrote in her journal that “maybe I could manifest my dream factory”.
At the retreat, she met a man who turned out to own an ice cream factory – and offered to produce Moonji that summer.
“For more synchronicity on top of the synchronicity, the factory is half an hour from my house!” she said in the video. “You could not make this up… it’s too much.”
She continued: “The night I flew home, my friend Corina told me I should apply to Dragon’s Den. I told her I’d just gotten the email.”
Abilasha replied to it in the nick of time – “I beat the deadline by one day” – and was invited to send samples of her product to the BBC building in Glasgow for tasting.
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The problem was, she had no product left… and no way to make it.
“There was one stockist left, in Glasgow… around the corner from the BBC offices!” she said.
After making it through to the next round, she had to find a way to produce some stock for the Dragons on the day – and her new factory supplier agreed to let her use the kitchen early for that purpose.
“Every hurdle after that solved itself the same strange way, right down to the friend who handed me his kitchen when I had no factory for filming day,” she wrote.
“None of it was planned. All of it was necessary. If you’re sitting on something right now, you don’t need the whole plan. Just take the next true step. The door opens when you need it to.”
She added in the vid: “Take the leap of faith – and trust.”