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Shark Tank India, launched in December 2020 and became a sleeper success on television. For the first time, young audiences were talking about start-ups and entrepreneurship. However, it also has its own share of controversies as many accused the show of being scripted. A couple of founders on the show recently also claimed that they did not receive funds that they were promised. Former shark Ashneer Grover also took a jibe at the judges, leading to Anupam Mittal taking to social media to refute all negative allegations.
The Shaadi-com founder, who has been on the reality show for two seasons, wrote a long note on LinkedIn giving his side of the story. “First it was ‘Sharks do not invest their own money’, then ‘Oh, the show is scripted’ & then ‘Sharks only fund profitable cos’. In every case, it’s not hard to spot a pre-determined, ill-intentioned narrative with no data or sources to back said claims. It is no surprise, then, that another flimsy controversy is doing the rounds. Again, no data, no real names. Just finger-pointing and in one case, an angry & irrelevant commentator thrown in for added masala,” he wrote.
Anupam mentioned how he was approached to share his take on these ‘alleged’ accusations. He then penned a long note explaining the many facets of the show. A part of the note read:
1)) Most of the businesses on the Tank are very early stage. Many are proprietorships, which first need to be registered as Companies. The founders have never seen an SHA, nor do they have readily available numbers. Our teams hand-hold them through many of these issues. As a result, deal completion can take 3 to 6 months depending on the readiness of the Company and the founders.
2) Sometimes deals don’t go through because the founder changes their mind, the company fails legal, financial and/or tax diligence OR the founders do not meet the obligations agreed to while accepting a ‘conditional deal’. For better or for worse, this is just the nature of deal-making.
3) Some founders like to renegotiate or deal-shop which can also delay completion. Personally, I don’t encourage this but am always open to finding win-win structures as many of my investee cos will attest to.
At a broader level, With ~200,000 entries, 388 pitches, (~50% women) & ~200 offers worth ~150 crores, Shark Tank has been a powerful force for democratizing Indian entrepreneurship.
So, if you are going to critique it, do it with data & specificity as opposed to loose anecdotes & ‘expert’ opinions that make for clickbait-y headlines but are either incomplete or far from the truth.
To founders who might have made such claims (questionable since we have no real names), here is an open invitation – please step forward. In the exceptional case that you have been wronged, let’s fix that. If you are just pissed off because you couldn’t extract money without meeting your obligations, well, lesson well learned.
Apart from Anupam Mittal, Shark Tank India 2 had Vineeta Singh, Aman Gupta, Amit Jain, Peyush Bansal and Namita Thapar.
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