Just a few days after Shark Tank India announced that it has opened registration for season 3, Anmol Sharma an entrepreneur, speaker, and content creator took to Twitter to reveal the dark side of Shark Tank. In a series of threads he revealed the working of the show and without revealing any names claimed that many contestants that were "promised funding on national television haven't received a single paisa".
He went on to say that the show is benefitting the sharks and the Sony network more than the 'frustrated and broken' contestants.
Explaining the three different stages of Shark Tank India that involves entrepreneurs pitching their businesses to the 'sharks' who then decide whether they want to invest in the company or not he said, "June to July is the period when Sony is accepting registrations for Shark Tank. For example, The Shark Tank S3 registrations are live now."
The second period according to Sharma is from August to November when the actual physical pitches take place and the third one is from December to January when the team wraps up its post-production and prepares to air the show.
"Now if a start-up was promised funding b/w Aug to Nov, they should receive their funding within 2 months because the due diligence and the legal proceedings don't go longer than that," said Sharma. But according to his tweets, the Sharks deliberately wait for the show to air and then based on the impact of the show on sales, website traffic, and other offers by investors and then decide how they want to proceed with the funding.
Sharma went on to add, "The start-ups that don't respond too well when the show is aired, they're made to move around in circles so they can further delay the investment and eventually try to get out of the agreement."
But he claims that this creates an issue for the entrepreneurs as the investors ask them if they did get some sort of funding from the Sharks and only approach them when they receive the funding.
Shark Tank only benefits Sharks and Sony Network
He decided not to reveal the names of these contestants and claimed that the show is more beneficial to the Sharks and Sony Network as they try to dramatize the entrepreneurial activities to gain traction and TRP. He even went on to give individual examples of Ashneer Grover whose recently launched book became a complete hit. He even went on to say, "Look at Lenskart founder, Peyush Bansal, he's gained enough recognition that he's on his own TV commercial along with Karan Johar."
He even gave examples of Anupam Mittal and Aman Gupta who have gained massive recognition and host conferences and podcasts.
Shark Tank America has a similar story
A similar situation can be seen in the original series of Shark Tank. According to a Forbes survey of 112 contestants close to half of the deals offered in season 8 to season 13 fell through. Sometimes the Sharks pull away other times the contestants pull away as they only needed the exposure on the stage.
Reasons for rejecting deals
However, there could be many reasons for the sharks to pull back. Once the show is over and the sharks begin to investigate the companies they may come across some information that was left out of the material information provided by the contestants. But the exact reason may differ from case to case. Until and unless one of the contestants comes and speaks about it openly one can only speculate.
Though we have had other similar instances where Twitter users have claimed that founders have not been given the promised funding. One such example is Akshay Shah, the founder, and CEO of iWebTechno who in February had sent out a tweet that read, "Met a founder yesterday who had got a deal from 2 sharks in season 1 and who never met him nor responded to his emails post #SharkTankIndia."
However there have been quite a few success stories that have come from the Shark Tank that include companies like Hammer Lifestyle, Get a Whey, Skippi Ice Pops, and Tagz Food. While the focus has only been on the bright side, is it possible that Shark Tank also has a dark side that the contestants are hesitant to reveal?
