Too few startups from Bengaluru on Shark Tank India reality show

Of the 198 businesses that made it, only about a dozen were from the 'startup city'

The first season of ‘Shark Tank India’, a reality show where startups pitch ideas to a panel of investors, had not even a single investor-judge from Bengaluru, India’s foremost startup hub.

Moreover, of the 198 businesses that pitched to the investors on TV, only about a dozen were from Bengaluru. The representation from the south appeared significantly lower, while businesses from Ahmedabad, Pune, and Delhi formed a good chunk. Over 62,000 aspirants had applied for the show.

Given Bengaluru’s reputation as the startup city, its seemingly low participation became a talking point after the show concluded last Friday. However, it must be mentioned that Delhi has replaced Bengaluru as the startup capital of India, according to the Economic Survey of 2022. Delhi now has over 5,000 recognised startups against 4,500 in Bengaluru.

‘Consumer brands’

Siddharth Mishra of NOCD, an energy drink brand that made it to the show and raised funds, feels the makers gave preference to food and drinks, fashion, wearables, and automobiles, “products that people can touch, feel and buy”. Bengaluru startups are mostly tech-based, the cofounder explains.

Harsha M V, who runs an influencer marketing firm in Bengaluru and moderates the All India Startups group on Clubhouse, adds: “If you talk about SaaS (software as a service) on TV, most viewers may not be able to relate to it. ‘How do I use it?’ they would wonder. Perhaps that’s why more D2C (direct to consumer) brands were aired.”

Likewise, marketing professional Aarti Shastry, an ardent viewer, believes software jargon would not have made for good TV, especially in the inaugural season when the focus was to garner viewership.

However, no such criteria was laid down for selection, says Pankaj Khabiya, founder and managing director of Ethik, a vegan clothing label for men that appeared on the TV round but could not raise funds. The process included filling out forms, sending video pitches, and attending the city audition at a hotel (near Trinity Circle), he recalls.

‘Merit counts’

Investor-judges on the show were from Mumbai, Pune, New Delhi, Gurugram and Faridabad
— none from Bengaluru.

Harsha says it is unfair to question “the merit” of the selection process but he does wonder why no investor-judge was from Bengaluru.

Zamzeer Ahamed, cofounder of Kunafa World, a food venture that pitched to the investors on air albeit unsuccessfully, agrees: “A lot of startups with out-of-the-box ideas had come at the audition. But many were pre-revenue and early-stage, so they may not have been investible.”

Anand Raj, a former RJ who now runs a zero-waste juice shop called Eat Raja, could be a case in point. Unlike other businesses who had to apply for the show, he was “invited” by the channel.

“I was called for an in-person audition in Mumbai. During my pitch, I asked for Rs 50 crore. I did not hear from them until January (when the show had begun),” he says. He now realises that his “ask” was unrealistic.

Zamzeer also fears the show was not marketed well. “I came to know about it by chance, because of algorithm-based recommendations on a news app. But my startup friend did not know. He wants to apply for the next season.”

‘Language divide’

The medium of the show was Hindi. Some feel it could have marred the chances of southern entrepreneurs. Dilip Ramesh, CTO of Thinkerbell Labs, a business that won funding for its Braille literacy device, doesn’t buy the argument. “Bengaluru is as cosmopolitan as it gets,” he says.

Its CEO Sanskriti Dawle, however, recalls her preparation: “During the audition, the ‘Shark Tank’ team prodded me to speak in Hindi. Later when we qualified, we hired a marketing consultant to write the Hindi pitch and practised it for three weeks.”

While venture capitalist Suresh Narasimha is glad that the show has made ‘entrepreneurship’ part of the country’s dinner table talk, he feels it became “a Delhi-centric event”, targeting Hindi audiences and the angel network up north. He hopes the next season will be more inclusive.

The team of SonyLIV, the OTT platform where the show streamed, remained unavailable for comment.

Bengaluru startups on the show

Some names are Thinkerbell Labs, Tagz Foods, NOCD, Ethik, Kunafa World, The State Plate, AyuRythm, Kabaddi Adda, Scholify, Shades of Spring, India Hemp and Co, and Qzense Labs.