REAL SHADY: Reddit User Raises Concerns Over This Shark Tank India Pitch

Shark Tank India, the Indian rendition of the US show of the same name, has garnered laurels and words of criticism. Whether one likes the show or not, it gives something that an investor meeting cannot necessarily give: eyeballs.

And this also brings pitches and companies, making these pitches on to the fore, even under scrutiny. One such case has been highlighted by a Redditor on the social media platform.

Real Shady

The Redditor chose to remain anonymous while pointing out, what they thought were discrepancies.

The question here is regarding Personal Touch Skin Care, a Panipat-based personal care company, that made its pitch for the ongoing season 4 of the show.

The pitch was aired in January, and this is what the Redditor had to say.

In the post with the headline Personal Skin Touch: Major scam? Or caught faking?

The user went onto introduce themselves, and said, "So here goes nothing. I am about to graduate from ISB and I run a decent scale D2C brand. Would prefer to not disclose the name, I’m not here for marketing."

After the caveat, the user made a claim, hinting that the business, in their words, is 'Shady'

The user said, "I feel every step of the way in their pitch, they were doing some REAL SHADY stuff. And I can prove it."

Faking Orders On Shopify?

At first, the user looked at the company's social media presence, and underscored its lack of engagement. The user said, "IMPOSSIBLE to have 1M+ views on Instagram and just 600 likes. Just accept that you boosted it. Don’t lie on national television."

Then the Redditors looked at the sales figured exalted by the company during the pitch.

"1 day spike in sales for over a cr - 100% Shopify order insertion. Boosting up sales just to increase your valuation before an investment round is a very well heard of thing. The only thing is - they got caught doing it live. Do you really think if this was NOT the case - shark tank would’ve had the audacity to show the last segment of their pitch where Vineeta disclosed their scams?", The user added.

Furthermore, the user also added, "This whole manufacturer BS - is something I’m personally not comfortable with. Skin care is something very personal and sensitive. I would get major trust issues if someone told me that the first thing brand I’m using has misrepresented legal information on its packaging."

Shopify Hack Possible

The Redditor concluded their post by saying, "I strongly feel that no brand should misrepresent themselves like this on national television. I’m trying to build a brand myself but I took a pledge to never lie to my customers ever. Hope the quality of skin care increases over time."

Some other users, responding to the post, shared their own thoughts, and highlighted possible avenues of fraud.

One user said, "It’s amazing how people don’t know how easy it is to fake shopify orders. I watched a reel where the founders were saying “Oh Shopify is a bigger company than all of the sharks if you’re calling that data fake we cant do anything”. Stupid idiots they weren’t calling the shopify data fake they were claiming the orders themselves were fake. Creating fake orders on shopify is legit a 2 min job. Place an order from your website on any random name and email via COD and just mark it as paid and fulfilled in shopify. Shopify would count it thinking the money came through and it shows up in Revenue calculations where the sale itself was fabricated in the first place."

In addition, it is to be noted, that these Redditors are not alone, and one of the Sharks in the show, Vineeta Singh of Sugar Cosmetics also raised issues with the company, calling them fake, during the pitch.