Budding entrepreneurs and startup founders will have two key shows vying for their attention over the next two months as the season of business reality shows will commence on Indian screens.
Amazon Prime Video’s first edition of Mission Start Ab begins on Tuesday (December 19) with 10 early-stage founders who will be put through some challenging assignments to test their entrepreneurial abilities.
The third edition of Shark Tank India, on the other hand, will begin on SonyLIV and Sony Entertainment Television in January with an expanded line-up of investors or sharks (12 in all as opposed to six earlier) who will back companies of their choice based on pitch presentations made by upcoming entrepreneurs.
Among the new faces joining the show include Radhika Gupta (managing director and CEO of Edelweiss Asset Management Company), Ritesh Agarwal (founder and CEO of OYO Rooms), Deepinder Goyal (founder and CEO of Zomato), Ronnie Screwvala (co-founder of upGrad), Azhar Iqubal (co-founder and CEO of Inshorts), and Varun Dua (founder of ACKO General Insurance).
These names will join Peyush Bansal (founder and CEO of Lenskart.com), Aman Gupta (Co-founder and CMO of boAt), Anupam Mittal (founder and CEO of Shaadi.com), Namita Thapar (executive director of Emcure Pharmaceuticals), Vineeta Singh (co-founder and CEO of SUGAR Cosmetics) and Amit Jain (CEO and co-founder of CarDekho Group) from the previous season.
Sony has been dropping teasers of the show on social media of late to build on the excitement. While Shark Tank India has grown over the last two years — Rs 42 crore invested in 67 businesses in season one and Rs 80 crore in 103 businesses in season two – the third edition will be bigger, executives at Sony say, as interest in entrepreneurship has zoomed in general and startups who’ve made it to the show evoke strong recall.
Though India’s startup ecosystem has seen a funding winter in recent years, it still remains a vibrant sector, ranked third globally after the US and China, according to the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT), Government of India.
There are over 99,000 recognised startups in India and over 110 unicorns valued at $347 billion, according to DPIIT.
Sushant Sreeram, country director, Prime Video, India, however, says that there is a need to move beyond funding milestones and look into the journey of startups.
“We want to bring into perspective what these journeys feel like and not just concentrate on the fund-raising milestones. We want to provoke, entertain and inspire our audiences with authentic stories of 10 startup founders, who’ve been selected from nearly 2,000 startups. We interviewed 200 to 250 of them to arrive at the current lot. These are diverse entrepreneurs from edtech to fintech, robotics, health and wellness,” Sreeram says.
In a conversation with FE, Snapdeal and Titan Capital’s Bahl said he remained committed to mentoring and investing in startups. “When I started as an entrepreneur 16 years ago, there were no such shows or platforms available to founders. One way to inspire and activate grass-roots entrepreneurs is to show them what the behind-the-scenes journey is like,” he said.
Singh and Chowdhary say that the show will touch every aspect of building a startup and could act as a ready reckoner or primer for early-stage founders.
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