2020 to 2030 is India’s decade of entrepreneurship: Anupam Mittal

Amidst the growing fanfare around India’s start-up ecosystem, Emmy-winning business reality show Shark Tank has finally come to India.

In this reality TV show format, entrepreneurs pitch their start-up ideas to a panel of investors or — as they are known on the show — sharks. Shark Tank India will have seven sharks on the panel — Anupam Mittal, Founder, Shaadi.com - People Group; Ashneer Grover, Founder and Managing Director, BharatPe; Vineeta Singh, CEO and co-Founder, SUGAR Cosmetics; Peyush Bansal, Founder and CEO, Lenskart.com; Namita Thapar, Executive Director, Emcure Pharmaceuticals; Ghazal Alagh, co-Founder, Mamaearth; and Aman Gupta, co-Founder and Chief Marketing Officer, boAt.

On average, one shark will commit between ₹20 lakh to ₹1 crore in the business ideas. There could be multi-shark deals as well, taking the investment size in a company to a couple of crores. The show will be aired on Sony Entertainment Television at 9 pm starting December 20. BusinessLine spoke to one of the sharks on Shark Tank India, Mittal, on the experience of making investment decisions on live television and the potential impact of the show on the start-up ecosystem.

You have been an active angel investor with a portfolio of over 200 investments including the likes of Ola, BigBasket, FarEye, Druva, Lets Venture and others. How was the investment experience different on the show as compared to the usual offline investment meetings?

I think it’s fundamentally a different format. In offline meetings, we are a little spoiled because one gets time to evaluate entrepreneurs and we can have multiple meetings. Of course, these days there is a lot of pressure even offline because there’s so much liquidity that everybody’s writing cheques very quickly. But otherwise, offline is a very different format.

On Shark Tank, you are competing live with other sharks to get the deal and so it creates a very different type of environment. Also, the founders are fairly nervous because there are 13 cameras pointed at them. It’s almost like an auctioning system with the sophistication of investing.

So, I think you have to up your game and adapt.

What parameters do you look at while assessing a start-up on the show, where you hardly get 30-60 mins wit the entrepreneurs?

I have a very simple method inspired by T20 cricket; I call it my T4 model. First T is TAM — total addressable market — followed by team, timing, and technology — can you really to create a differentiator in the space.

But, of course, it is not easy to assess a company in the short period of time available on the show, so I try to look for two things. First, I try to look for exceptionalism — exceptional things the entrepreneur has done in their life to glide ahead. Second, I look for perseverance. When I look at my portfolio companies or my own experience, I find that the single most important quality that determines success for an entrepreneur is perseverance.

So I try to ask questions that expose the ability to persevere and some level of exceptionalism in those 30 minutes to 60 minutes on the show.

Do you expect the launch of shows like Shark Tank to inspire Indians to take up entrepreneurship as a profession and not limit themselves to safe career choices?

I don’t think wanting to be doctor or engineer reflects a safe mindset. It reflects entrepreneurship itself.

What Indians realised many decades ago was that the only opportunity available to us to make a good living was to become doctors or engineers. Because you can only do entrepreneurship if you had the capital and licenses. So people turned to professions where opportunities for money-making existed.

That’s actually not a safe play. It is a very entrepreneurial mindset to look for an opportunity to make money and do something about it. Now that we have the capital available in India and opportunities abound, I think Indians will emerge as the biggest and best entrepreneurs in the world. 2020 to 2030 is India’s decade of entrepreneurship at a global scale.

How do you see the launch of the show impacting the funding ecosystem in India? Do you expect more people to get comfortable with investing in start-ups?

As people look at the news cycle, with start-ups going from zero to a billion dollar valuation in a matter of six months — everybody will want in on the action. On LetsVenture, we recently managed to raise ₹75 crore through one of my syndicates, which is more than what VCs invest in one company. So people above a certain income threshold, let’s say ₹30 -40 lakh a year, are starting to put a little money into start-ups as an alternative investment strategy.

With Shark Tank India, I think there will be more faith among people but there is a big fat line between exposing yourself to alternative investments such as start-ups versus starting to gamble in them. And we’re hoping that people understand that while the show’s format appears like we’re putting money wherever we get excited, that’s not true. We have been doing this for so many years that we understand what’s going to work and what’s not going to work, and sometimes even we are wrong. As long as people do it judiciously, it is a very important asset class. I most certainly think that this show will further accelerate start-up creation in our country by bringing it into everybody’s living room.

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