He claims he has suffered a backlash against him \u2018bragging\u2019 about his worth and seen a massive 80 per cent drop in sales.<\/p>\n
Hajikypri used to drive a \u00a350,000 Audi Q7 but now has to borrow his girlfriend\u2019s Smart car.<\/p>\n
He has sold his house and is living in a rented home and has been forced into putting \u00a390,000 back into his health food business to keep it alive.<\/p>\n
The situation is a far cry from his success in July earlier this year, when Hajikypri claimed that he had been offered \u00a390 million for his company Professional Gains.<\/p>\n
But he turned that offer down because he believed he could do better on his own, but now he says, \u201cI wish I had taken a tenth of that offer now. I\u2019ve had hate mail, it\u2019s been awful.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hajikypri, who is from Great Barr, Birmingham, was on BBC\u2019s Dragons\u2019 Den last year with his Pro Gains healthy meals service but left with nothing, with Deborah Meaden telling him he\u2019d overvalued his company at \u00a32 million.<\/p>\n
But just a few months later, Marco had expanded to three units in West Bromwich and employed 33 people to prepare and deliver 7,000 meals a week to customers\u2019 doors.<\/p>\n
He claimed the business was then worth \u00a316 million but that Coventry multi-millionaire Jojar Singh Dhinsa saw his potential and was prepared to buy the business for \u00a390 million.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think I have been portrayed by some media outlets as a money grabber, which is not true because I\u2019m all about giving back. Last year I donated \u00a34,000 worth of food to the homeless,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not going to give up though, my goal and vision are still the same and I will keep working.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Marco Hajikypri who was rejected by Dragons\u2019 Den, and then turned down a \u00a390 million offer for his company has had to sell his house and car. He claims he has suffered a backlash against him \u2018bragging\u2019 about his worth and seen a massive 80 per cent drop in sales. Hajikypri used to drive a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":101,"featured_media":24617,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37,112],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24616","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","category-top-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24616","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/101"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24616"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24616\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24617"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24616"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24616"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24616"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}