Speaking in chaste Hindi to rehearsing pitches for hours: Shark Tank India pitcher exposes inside details; calls out Sharks Ashneer Grover, Aman Gupta and others for their 'arrogant' comments

Shark Tank India has emerged as one of the most talked-about shows on Indian TV lately. From hilarious memes based on the sharks’ reactions to their personal lives, everything under its roof has taken to the most trending topics today. However, the show and its panelists aka the sharks have gotten swirled up in a major controversy now. An entrepreneur who participated in the show, came out and bashed the show on Twitter. Apparently, the episode featuring him hasn’t aired on TV. Unhappy with the format of the show and the reactions of the sharks on his business pitch, the entrepreneur took to the social media platform to let out his grievances from the show.

Akshay Shah, an entrepreneur who participated in the show expressed his grievances in a Twitter thread. He shared that the episode featuring him hasn’t aired yet on TV and then went on to reveal what happens behind the scenes on Shark Tank India. As he talked about the concept of the show and how the pitches of the entrepreneurs are prepared. He wrote, “The show comprises 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.”

In another tweet, the entrepreneur revealed that none of the pitchers are allowed to use any other language but only Hindi. He further revealed that every pitcher has to rehearse their pitch for hours before getting the opportunity to present their business model in front of the panellists. “The Channel will try to make your pitch as simple as possible and in chaste Hindi for the viewers to understand. Multiple rehearsals will be done for 2 days till late nights till the Channel is sure you are good to go and some guys are given more practice and attention from the 1st day,” he wrote.

In the tweets followed by the one above mentioned, the rejected entrepreneur talked about how only a few selected pitchers are given a long time to pitch. He further added that the Sharks might also have some recommendations about whom to invest in. His tweet read, "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…” In continuation, he wrote, “taken up last on both the days and for not more than 10 mins with no focus given to us so we thought we are really good so the channel is not worried about us and our pitch which was totally wrong in hindsight.”

Akshay Shah also threw light on how the show and channel focuses on gaining TRPs. he revealed, “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.”

The participant explained him business model in a few other tweets and then shared his experience with Shark Ashneer Grover. Slamming him for his remark, he wrote, “So when we said we have 700k students with us, his exact was "Data to Kilo ke Bhaav main Chandni Chowk pe bikta hai!!" My reply to Mr Grover is, sir, this is not a name place animal thing data like you might be capturing in BharatPe to show GMV and gain valuation & funding.” The entrepreneur further stated that Ashneer’s reason to pass on his pitch was ‘whimsical’ .

After slamming Ashneer Grover, the entrepreneur claimed that another shark who had a ‘problem’ with his business model was Aman Gupta. He shared that the latter wasn’t too convinced with his business’ name and mocked his own brand. A part of his tweets for Aman read, “Sirjee! yeh koi USB headset nai, that aasani se samaj aa jayega, thoda vakt lagega this is hightech :)”. Another tweet targeted at Aman Gupta read, “Secondly, trust me, till date I have not understood why is boAt called boAt and your company called Imagine Marketing Limited, but I can't ask, right!!!” Meanwhile, yet another tweet was, “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?”

Continuing, the entrepreneur praised Namita Thapar for debating with Ashneer Grover for him. But later criticised her for opting out from raising funds for his company. He questioned her ‘tech incapabilty’ and said, “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.”

In a few other tweets, Akshay Shah revealed that Peyush Bansal related his unique business model to a few other already existing ones, and decided to give a pass to him. Giving a befitting reply to him, the participant mentioned the highs and lows of Peyush’s business and company. He wrote, “Next came in was LensKart #PeeyushBansal who had started up 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!”

The entrepreneur further took Shark Anupam Mittal’s name and revealed that he apparently had a problem with a line that he said in Gujarati, the former’s native language. He further revealed that the creatives had ‘advised’ him to use. He claimed that the Gujarati one liner ‘pierced Anupam like a bullet’ and added that he wanted to tell the Shark to question the creatives instead of him. “why did I say 1 line in Gujarati as if that pierced him like a bullet - to which I had to retort that I am a gujju so it came naturally (although I wanted to say go and ask the channel creative sirjee if this hurts u so much as its they who told me to speak this line in Gujarati!),” he wrote.

In continuation, the Shark Tank India participant shared his piece of advice for fellow entrepreneurs. He suggested that “only pitch if you are early stage revenue generating or looking for a seed / pre-seed round, These guys will not invest more than a crore and will take a lions share”. He continued and added, “My personal advise is better to pitch / apply to an accelerator / incubator as they will do something more focussed and better. Here my personal opinion is that you will encounter a lot of jhoomla and arrogance.”

The entrepreneur concluded his thread with a last note wherein he challenged the panellists of Shark Tank India. He wrote, “Raja raja hota hai, chahe bada ho ya chota, doesn't matter, I said the same to Ranavijay post shoot when he asked me how I am feeling, I even told him god willing I challenge the so called Sharks.” In his last tweet, he said, “and will replace them in the years to come on the show and do real justice to my fellow entrepreneurs with humility as I have been on the other side of the table too :) Cheers!!!”