Shark Tank India's Anupam Mittal takes a jibe at the controversy of 'funding allegations' on the show; writes “Bark Tank”

Shark Tank India was in the news when the reality show was recently mired in a controversy when the start-up founders were unable to receive funds that the judges had promised to invest in their start-ups. Ex-Shark Ashneer Grover also took a jibe at the judges to which Shark Anupam Mittal replied by sharing a long post on his LinkedIn account.
Anupam started the post with a quote and said, “First it was ‘Sharks do not invest their own money’, then ‘Oh, the show is scripted’ & then ‘Sharks only fund profitable cos’.” Anupam retorted back indirectly to the quotes shared about the show and stated that it's a pre-determined and ill-intentional narrative that is given about the show.
Anupam further spoke about how outsiders are adding masala to the news and making false accusations and also added a response to it. Anupam wrote, “While I cannot comment on specific instances, given you have NOT produced any names, I am sharing my views under the assumption that you will use them without modifying their intent or content.”
Take a look at the post:

Anupam further wrote about the statistics and the ratio of the show in the US and in India. Anupam also gave the CR and timelines of the show and added “1)) Most of the businesses on the Tank are very early stage. Many are proprietorships, which first need to be registered as Companies. The founders have never seen an SHA, nor do they have readily available numbers. Our teams hand-hold them through many of these issues. As a result, deal completion can take 3 to 6 months depending on the readiness of the Company and the founders. 2) Sometimes deals don’t go through because the founder changes their mind, the company fails legal, financial and/or tax diligence OR the founders do not meet the obligations agreed to while accepting a ‘conditional deal’. For better or for worse, this is just the nature of deal-making. 3) Some founders like to renegotiate or deal-shop which can also delay completion. Personally, I don’t encourage this but am always open to finding win-win structures as many of my investee cos will attest to. At a broader level, With ~200,000 entries, 388 pitches, (~50% women) & ~200 offers worth ~150 crores, Shark Tank has been a powerful force for democratizing Indian entrepreneurship. So, if you are going to critique it, do it with data & specificity as opposed to loose anecdotes & ‘expert’ opinions that make for clickbait-y headlines but are either incomplete or far from the truth.”
Further, for the post, Anupam shared a picture that had a big dog heads barking in the picture with ‘Bark Tank’ written as the title of the show.
Anupam in the end called upon people who made such claims and gave them an open invitation to speak about it. He stated, “To founders who might have made such claims (questionable since we have no real names), here is an open invitation - please step forward. In the exceptional case that you have been wronged, let’s fix that. If you are just pissed off because you couldn’t extract money without meeting your obligations, well, lesson well learned.”


Shark Tank is soon going to return to the small screen with the third season.