There are serious entrepreneurs with some innovative ideas, like the young women from Bangalore who run a shop selling wrapped flowers poojas, or the enthusiastic duo wanting to popularize Darjeeling tea, the couple hoping to revive traditional sari weaves, or the serious young man who’s created a smart watch for kids that parents can use to track their children and with able to communicate with them, observes Deepa Gahlot.

That shark tank Franchise was successful in about 27 countries but when it arrived in India the timing was spot on.

The COVID pandemic had turned so many lives upside down – people were losing their jobs, but at the same time there was a surge in startups targeting the stay-at-home segment (grocery delivery at the top of the list). growth in the gig economy.

If OTT audiences have been addicted to entertainment reality shows, they are also beginning to engage with money.

The concept of shark tank is seemingly simple – small business owners who need funding to grow their businesses pitch their ideas to a panel of investors or “sharks” who then evaluate their proposal and decide whether to invest money and take equity stakes in the business and return.

There’s a lot more legal and financial process left out of the picture, of course, and only the simplified and fun part of pitching is seen – the idea, the questions and answers, the hope in the pitchers’ eyes, and the joy or Disappointment after their proposal is accepted or rejected.

This Dragon’s Den format for business reality show originated in Japan in 2001, where money tiger turned out to be a hit.

its american version, shark tankcreated by Mark Burnett, started in 2009 and ran for 14 seasons, winning several Emmys in the process.

Shark Tank India Season 1, in which seven investors evaluated proposals over 34 episodes, turned out to be a surprise hit, and the sharks – Ashneer Grover in particular – became stars in their own right.

He does not appear in season 2 where there are only five sharks in the first two episodes, repeating themselves from the first season (Vineeta Singh, Namrata Thapar, Anupam Mittal, Peyush Bansal, and Aman Gupta, all of whom are wealthy entrepreneurs themselves, though not right on top of the heap).

Season 2 might have had a different set of sharks, or at least a mix-and-match, but perhaps the producers wanted to capitalize on Season 1’s investor popularity.

Shark Tank Indiathankfully, it dispenses with the studio audience, but the set is garish, more suited to a music or dance reality show than a business program.

This time hosted by Rahul Dua (who has very little to do), the show, with Payel Seth as creative director, actually draws viewers in with its emotional stake.

For example, shock and tears when a contestant mentions the loss of family in a fire, although enough business jargon is thrown around to excite viewers watching to that end.

The sharks rarely bar their teeth (their “over the top” reactions often look like they’ve been shot separately and clumsily inserted when necessary) and are mostly encouraging and compassionate, though the pitchers are made to stand in front of them like naughty ones Students the principal’s office.

In season 2, they are unduly nasty to a duo touting their homemade brand of makeup for not looking sophisticated (class bias on display) and then rejecting their proposal because they would be competitors to Vineeta Singh, the one runs cosmetics empire.

Pleasantly surprisingly, over 35 episodes of season 1 and 50 episodes of season 2, there are serious entrepreneurs with some innovative ideas, like the young women from Bangalore who run a business selling packaged flowers poojas, or the enthusiastic duo wanting to popularize Darjeeling tea, the couple hoping to revive traditional sari weaves, or the serious young man who’s created a smart watch for kids that parents can use to track their children and with can communicate with them.

They’re just a fraction of the thousands applying to be on the show.

Of course, the risk of an idea being stolen is just as great as the failure of a promising business.

The show is too new to track the progress or failure of pitchers getting away with checks.

Season 2 begins with Vineeta and Namrata chasing two cucumber manufacturing entrepreneurs in Darbhanga, Bihar, with investment offers when they turned down their pitch in the earlier season.

So despite its vicious title, what Shark Tank India offers viewers hope. If these ordinary, hardworking, and optimistic people can make it this far, anyone with a viable business plan and the intelligence to pull it off can.

Shark Tank 2 streaming on SonyLIV.

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