Exclusive- Shark Tank India 3: Cervical Cancer's self-sampling kit pitcher Anirban Palit on getting trolled due to the recent fake death stunt, says 'We were called out as Poonam Pandey ki company hai'

In the recent episode of Shark Tank India 3, Anirban Palit and Sayantani Pramanik came up with their brand that made self-sampling kits for Cervical Cancer. With a social cause and their zeal to create solutions, their ask was of Rs 75 Lakhs for 1.5% equity. The duo got two offers in the tank and they went with Namita Thapar's offer of Rs 75 Lakhs for 5% and a condition of technical due diligence. In an exclusive conversation with ETimes TV, Anirban spoke about their vision and his deal with Namita. He also got candid about how they got trolled as Poonam Pandey's brand due to her recent fake death stunt for Cervical cancer.

Before Cervicheck, it is essential to understand Cervical Cancer as the problem area. It is the most preventable cancer but unfortunately, the numbers in India are staggering so it is just next to Breast Cancer in terms of how many women are losing their lives. Also, remember that prevention can take place if there is an element of adoption and ease in getting the early screening and early detection. That is where we are coming in with our brand through our vision.

First, our thought was to make the screening process easy. One of the biggest challenges that a lady faces while undergoing voluntary screening, the whole process is not very comfortable. The process is intrusive and sometimes she has to answer judgmental questions and also questions about her family. We wanted to solve that so we developed a self-sampling kit so that the women don't need to go for such sampling processes and it is accessible to them at their ease.

It has been excellent, I must commend Namita's team for being so diligent. Within a few weeks after the shoot, Namita's team got in touch with us, they arranged the whole process and we had to send the self-sampling kits to the designated technical team. They evaluated the kits and then sent a report to Namita's office. After receiving the technical due diligence, Namita's office contacted us and the process is successfully over. We have been instructed to go ahead with all the paperwork as soon as the funds are released.

To be very honest, it takes away the whole seriousness about the whole condition and that was not at all a good thing to do. The kind of frivolity it created, even with our posts and appearance, many keyboard warriors commented on our posts and trolled, 'yeh toh poonam pandey ki company hai', 'yeh sab fake hai' and stuff like that.

That takes away the whole seriousness of what happens in the condition and the seriousness of the pain that a lady goes through. Talking about it in length, we have been in the industry for the last four years and we have spoken to survivors. Because of the whole shame issue and having an issue of a sexual connotation, a lady doesn't even reveal that she is suffering from Cervical cancer, she goes on to suffer from that pain without telling her family members.

Just to take out all that seriousness and putting it into a frivolous act, was a very bad thing to do. There are also school of thought which say that at least people came to know about Cervical cancer because of Poonam Pandey, but I would like to say that becoming aware of this condition in a frivolous manner is not the right thing to do.

The route of awareness is long but the most effective one. We have been working in the direction of partnering with NGOs that shall help us reach people on the grassroot level. There are NGOs who are tirelessly working on it, not something like what Poonam Pandey did, they are following the structured manner and that is how awareness would be created. We are a business model and we need to create profits, we aren't doing the awareness, but it is the CSR that takes care of it.

There are many artists who are spreading and creating awareness around Cervical Cancer. Be it Vidya Balan doing a campaign with Roche Diagnostics, Sara Ali Khan, they are putting in the right efforts but sometimes more than spreading awareness and imparting knowledge, it is important for the masses as well to accept it. We are also doing an awareness campaign but still it is very difficult to reach. There is more dialogue needed at the grassroots level to make the masses understand. That is needed, not Poonam Pandey's stunts.