Season 5 of Shark Tank India premiered on Monday on SonyLiv and Sony Entertainment Television and features a mix of some of the old judges and some new ones. We ran into Anupam Mittal at an event which was celebrating five years of Shark Tank India, and so we just had to ask him some of the questions below, which he cheerfully answered. Excerpts:
Five years of being a judge on Shark Tank India, what has that changed about you?
Life has completely changed. Five years ago, I was only famous inside my own head; now I’m famous all over the world. People start recognizing you, and wherever we go, we are celebrated, because of which our life and our family’s life all undergo a big change. The other big change is that there is far more responsibility as far as our businesses are concerned. There’s one thing which is very common in India—if you’re the head of a company like TataSky or Maruti and are attending some party, someone might just come up and complain to you that his Maruti car is not functioning properly. And now that we’ve become famous, you won’t believe some of the things we have to hear from people, which is why we have to take responsibility for that and be more sincere towards our work and be more accountable. So I think that's the second part.
Robert Downey Jr |
And the third part, and I think most important for me, is that once you become a founder, after a few years, the reason you became successful is because you were very close to customers and you had customer empathy. But when you become a little big, you become removed from the customer. The foolishness or naivety which you had when starting out, which is very necessary to build large companies, reduces, and you begin to become a little cynical. Through Shark Tank India, we meet hundreds of founders who still have that innocence and that naivety that we have somewhere lost a little bit of. So that acts as a refresher in my mind to stay young, hungry, and foolish. And that’s what it takes to build global, world-class companies.
Superb answer. People have often spoken of a resemblance between you and Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.). Any chances of you being featured as Bollywood’s Iron Man?
Oh my God! (Laughs) So here’s my view on that—this is the first year in Season 5 that companies are coming to Shark Tank India and not saying, “I want to be the Amazon of India” or “the Netflix of India.” They are saying, “I am building in India for the world.” So I think the question should be to Iron Man—when is he going to feature Anupam Mittal in Hollywood?
The complete list of judges are:
1. Aman Gupta, Co-founder of boAt
2. Anupam Mittal (Founder and CEO of Shaadi.com – People Group)
3. Namita Thapar (Executive Director of Emcure Pharmaceuticals)
4. Vineeta Singh (Co-founder and CEO of SUGAR Cosmetics)
5. Ritesh Agarwal (Founder and CEO of OYO Rooms)
6. Kunal Bahl (Co-founder, Snapdeal and Titan Capital, Promoter, Unicommerce)
7. Amit Jain (CEO and Co-founder of CarDekho Group, InsuranceDekho.com)
8. Mohit Yadav (Co-founder of Minimalist)
9. Varun Alagh (CEO & Co-founder of Honasa Consumer Ltd)
10. Kanika Tekriwal (Founder, JetSetGo Aviation)
11. Viraj Bahl (Founder and Managing Director of Veeba/VRB Consumer Products)
12. Shaily Mehrotra (Co-founder and CEO of Fixderma India Pvt. Ltd.)
13. Hardik Kothiya (Founder and Managing Director of Rayzon Solar)
