Shark Tank winner Kane Bodiam was locked in legal fight with ex-employer

THE man who landed the most lucrative ever deal in Australian Shark Tank was previously accused of “misleading” and “deceptive” conduct.

THE man who this week landed the most lucrative ever deal in Australian Shark Tank history was previously accused of “misleading” and “deceptive” conduct in a damning Supreme Court ruling.

Kane Bodiam, 36, scored a $2.5 million deal for a 22.5 per cent stake of his iCapsulate coffee company, with entrepreneur Andrew Banks agreeing to the deal after listening to a two hour presentation about the company that claims to produce Australia’s first biodegradable coffee pods.

While the Shark Tank success has the potential to make him a household name, a Sydney court ruled in 2015 that he’d made false claims about his role at his former workplace, Mad Coffee Capsules.

Shark Tank is a popular Network Ten show where entrepreneur-contestants make business presentations to a panel of “shark” investors, who then must choose whether or not to invest.

Mr Bodiam claimed on his Facebook and LinkedIn pages that he established and ran Mad Coffee Capsules, which Justice Richard White found was misleading conduct.

“Kane Ronald Vasudevan Bodiam engaged in misleading and deceptive conduct by publishing the messages,” according the judgement issued on October 2, 2015.

Mr Bodiam was ordered not to claim the coffee pods produced by his former employer were risky and was “restrained” from pretending he once led the company.

He was also forbidden from sharing Mad Coffee capsules’ “secret manufacturing processes”. That company and his own both produce capsules that can be used Nespresso coffee-making machines.

Kane Bodiam said previous court action was a “smear campaign”.

Mr Bodiam told The Daily Telegraph he had been victim of a “smear” campaign.

He told the paper he filed no defence in the case because it would have been a waste of money.

“It comes down to it was a simple waste of money arguing this in court, which I realised they wanted me to do. There was nothing false and misleading about the statements.”

After his stunning win, Mr Bodiam revealed he’d practised his pitch to the ‘sharks’ about 500 times.

“When I started to serve them coffee I thought I was going to drop one of the cups,” he said.

iCapsulate produces tens of millions of coffee capsules each year for some of the biggest brands in Australia.

In August, the company will launch the first Australian standard biodegradable coffee capsule.

Bodiam served coffee to the sharks as he told them that iCapsulate, which is only 18 months old, had $4 million in sales last year and produces 35 million pods per annum.

Mr Banks said putting such big money into iCapsulate was a no-brainer.

“The world is desperate for bio degradable coffee pods,” Banks says. “Australia alone uses a billion pods and they go into land fill.

“iCapsulate could scale up to be a $50 million to $70 million business if all went well.”

Bodiam’s clients currently include Woolworths, Coca-Cola, and Robert Timms.

— additional reporting: The Daily Telegraph