Shark Tank India was India’s first business reality program. The inaugural season ended last week. The show was a success, both in terms of viewership and also in inspiring the startup community. In the first season of 30 episodes, 198 pitchers were selected to present their business. Aspiring entrepreneurs pitch their company models to a panel of investors (sharks) in order to persuade them to invest money in their idea in this business reality show. Out of 198, 67 businesses received investment totaling INR 41.98 crore.
Ashneer Grover, Namita Thapar, Anupam Mittal, Vineeta Singh, Ghazal Alagh, Peyush Bansal, and Aman Gupta are the judges of Shark Tank India. Not everyone received the funding, but all of them got some important and useful lessons. Shark Tank India was a reality show. We enjoy what we see on television as it is customized as per our interests. However, whatever we see on television, may not be the same story behind the scenes. Recently, Akshay Shah, a businessman appeared on the show and offered his idea to the Sharks. His experience, however, was not something we have seen on television. It is a reality check. Akshay has shared his whole experience on Twitter in a long thread.
According to Akshay, despite him and his team participating in the show, his episode was not even telecasted. Starting his long thread, Akshay shared,
The show comprises of a 3 minute pitch followed by a Q&A with the sharks. Your pitch is designed by the Channel creatives and mostly you need to stick to it and speak Hindi, at times your USP can get diluted but that's how the scheme of things is.
— Akshay Shah – Founder CEO, iWeb (@AkshayiWeb) February 5, 2022
Akshay also talked about how a few people get more attention than others. He added that the channel selects candidates for the judges to put their money in.
the 1st day and if I can connect the dots I feel they are the channel's so called recommendation to the Sharks to invest, with whom they spend less time are maybe the backups or wild cards who are left in the tank to test their luck, we were one of them as all our rehearsals were
— Akshay Shah – Founder CEO, iWeb (@AkshayiWeb) February 5, 2022
My wife who is also our director sales and my 11 year old daughter were also called for the side kick and TRPs 🙂
All said and done am still obliged & thankful to the channel's creative leads and team (frontend backend and accounts too) to show a large heart and let us pitch as— Akshay Shah – Founder CEO, iWeb (@AkshayiWeb) February 5, 2022
entrepreneurs benefitted but where we feel the problem was, is the Sharks!
Technically, we have as much business exposure as the Sharks sitting on the other side and since our Business Model is second to none and a bit against one of the Shark's Business Model is where the games— Akshay Shah – Founder CEO, iWeb (@AkshayiWeb) February 5, 2022
We Digitize Universities & Colleges on a unique FREEMIUM Model and monetize on a B2B2C SaaS Enabled Marketplace play. We have 700k students and we monetize when the Students transact / pay fees via the MDR which is directly against #ashneergrover business of Zero MDR.
— Akshay Shah – Founder CEO, iWeb (@AkshayiWeb) February 5, 2022
Akshay Shah also criticized the judges for not grasping his business pitch and responded with some weird responses. Talking about Ashneer Grover, Akshay added,
Our data is qualified student data on which we run intelligent AI for our marketplace partners. If you applied a little bit of mind and shown a little more patience you could have got that. Anyways, his whimsical reason to pass on us was that we do not have a Mobile app,
— Akshay Shah – Founder CEO, iWeb (@AkshayiWeb) February 5, 2022
and not the student he did not buy that argument maybe due to his poor tech sense. Be it whatever, we found his reason really amusing!!!
— Akshay Shah – Founder CEO, iWeb (@AkshayiWeb) February 5, 2022
Akshay also talked about how Aman Gupta, the founder of boAt was not impressed with the name of his brand and logo. He continued,
our Less code tech name 'Agilewiz' all was a big big problem. So my reply to Aman is, Sirjee! yeh koi USB headset nai, that aasani se samaj aa jayega, thoda vakt lagega this is hightech 🙂
— Akshay Shah – Founder CEO, iWeb (@AkshayiWeb) February 5, 2022
If someday tables turn, I will ask him the same question in the same arrogant tone and with the same expression he did that to us. I mean, we are in SharkTank, selected from over thousands of applicants so the channel and their team would have done some due diligence, right?
— Akshay Shah – Founder CEO, iWeb (@AkshayiWeb) February 5, 2022
He also pointed out that Namita Thapar was kind, however, she opted out because of a lack of expertise in the technical business. Akshay added,
#namitathapar was kind to us and debated with Ashneer to respect the grit which we have put in our business through thick and think but for Ashneer a pivot means a loss making product cover up, for him to pivot is to sin.
— Akshay Shah – Founder CEO, iWeb (@AkshayiWeb) February 5, 2022
My only request to Namita was since she liked us but opted out from the fund raise due to her non understanding our tech business, she could have either opted out of all tech pitches totally since she said that to many other tech pitches OR she should have tried to understand our
— Akshay Shah – Founder CEO, iWeb (@AkshayiWeb) February 5, 2022
According to Akshay, Piyush Bansal could not trust his idea as his own student-finding platform failed miserably. He added,
Next came in was LensKart #PeeyushBansal who had startedup an Education discovery platform before he started LensKart and since he could not monetize nor run it nor earn via its marketplace his fixation was that this can't scale up!
— Akshay Shah – Founder CEO, iWeb (@AkshayiWeb) February 5, 2022
that we are same like his student discovery platform which tanked so that was another pass!
— Akshay Shah – Founder CEO, iWeb (@AkshayiWeb) February 5, 2022
At last, he talked about Anupam Mittal. According to Akshay, Anupam was not delighted with him using his mother tongue Gujarati. He added,
we had rehearsed this time and again with the channel creative and they had even advised me to use a few more gujju words just to keep the pitch light but alas it seems the Sharks were not as well trained as we were and hence twice I was asked by Mr Mittal
— Akshay Shah – Founder CEO, iWeb (@AkshayiWeb) February 5, 2022
followed by which he said tech and scale is not my worry but my issue is that you doing a B2B2C which is second to none and since you are neither a B2B nor a B2C you maybe innovated this model seeing and reading a lot of newspapers but I do not find it focussed.
— Akshay Shah – Founder CEO, iWeb (@AkshayiWeb) February 5, 2022
The thread went viral and the people are supporting Akshay Shah. The makers and the judges have not responded to the allegations yet. What do you guys think about it? Let us know in the comments below.
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