Are All 'Shark Tank India' Deals Completed? This Pitcher Raised Rs 1.5 Crores But Didn't Get Anything

In the second season of Shark Tank India, a plant-based air purifier start-up called UBreathe secured a deal of Rs 1.5 crores from Namita Thapar on the show, but in reality, it got nothing.

Are All 'Shark Tank India' Deals Completed?

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After months of chasing, this pitcher got nothing out of Rs 1.5 crores deal

Months ago, Sanjay Maurya, the founder of UBreathe revealed in a podcast conversation with Startup Pedia that he chased the channel and ultimately gave up and moved on.

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"It was not funding. It was a commitment for funding, and any deal on Shark Tank is not a sure-shot commitment. More than 20-25 percent of people don't even get their funding. Unfortunately, we were also a part of those 75 percent of people. It took us almost nine months to chase them asking for an answer, asking for closure, so that we could go somewhere else. Wherever we were going, they would ask us about the funding from Shark Tank India. Now what do we tell them? Suddenly after so much back and forth, our POC (point of contact) was changed."

They were asked to put aside the deal they secured on the show. "In our case, the deal changed. The POC asked us to overlook the Rs 1 Cr debt initially promised on air ¨C due to regulatory changes by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) that were in the works during the episode. It felt weird because we thought if this was the case, then why promise debt in the first place?"

As per an analysis by PrivateCircle Research, a private market intelligence firm, over 40 percent of the deals made on Shark Tank India season 1 were closed. In terms of value, the Sharks paid only Rs 17 crores as opposed to deals worth Rs 40 crores that they committed to on the show.

Delayed funding scam

In June last year, Anmol Sharma, a Twitter user who described himself as an entrepreneur, called Shark Tank India "a delayed funding scam". In a series of tweets, he explained how the participants on the show are more likely to be "frustrated and broken". He wrote, "Let's look at the Shark Tank India timeline to understand how these Sharks look to blackout from their agreement, June to July is the period when Sony is accepting registrations for Shark Tank. For example, The Shark Tank S3 registrations are live now. August to November is when the actual physical pitches take place from the filtered lot. Between Dec to Jan, the Sony team wrap up their post-production and get Shark Tank ready to air. Now if a start-up was promised funding between Aug to Nov, they should receive their funding within 2 months because the due diligence and the legal proceedings don't go longer than that", he continued.

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In response to this tweet about the Shark Tank India scam, Anupam Mittal responded by writing on Instagram, "First it was 'Sharks do not invest their own money', then, 'Oh, the show is scripted' and later 'Sharks only fund profitable startups'. The latest is - 'Sharks don¡¯t actually invest'. Ab next kya hoga? kuch bolo toh tommy, kuch na bolo toh bhi doggie... It¡¯s a fact."

It's the same in Shark Tank USA!

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As per a report on Forbes, they reached out to 319 businesses that accepted deals on-air in the first seven seasons of Shark Tank USA and found out that 73 percent did not get the exact deal they made on TV. The pitchers told the publication that the Sharks either pull out of agreements or change the terms. However, the publicity that the pitchers get on the show is worth more than the deal.

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