Namita Thapar opens up about lessons and regrets from Shark Tank India

Namita Thapar, the Executive Director of Emcure Pharmaceuticals, became a household name when she appeared in Season 1 of Shark Tank India on Sony Entertainment Television. She was applauded for her sharp but encouraging feedback to budding entrepreneurs, and for highlighting the sexism and misogyny that women entrepreneurs have to deal with in India.

After two months of hectic shooting, Thapar sat back and watched the show. The last episode aired on February 4, 2022 but the stories of the bright and passionate people that she had met lingered on in her mind. During this time, her son was preparing for his ICSE board examinations, and Thapar wanted to offer him all the moral support that she could. Sitting beside him while he studied, she started writing a book called The Dolphin and The Shark.

How did she come up with this unusual title? In the preface, she clarifies, “I strongly believe that all of us have a shark in us representing aggression, ruthlessness and ferocity. At the same time, we also have a dolphin within representing kindness, empathy and vulnerability. We have to learn to balance both if we want to maximize our productivity and potential.”

In this book, Thapar opens up about how she became a shark in the first place. She was in New Jersey in the United States of America to meet Gayle Jagel, the founder and CEO of a company called Young Entrepreneurs Academy. This company teaches entrepreneurship to people in the age group of 11 to 18. Thapar got the pan-India rights for this academy, and loved working with young entrepreneurs for six years. After that, she exited the US franchise and rebranded her academy as Thapar Entrepreneurs Academy so that she could extend the courses to adults as well. When she got in touch with the makers of Shark Tank India to “persuade them” to give some of her students a chance to be part of the show, they asked her if she would like to be a shark offering feedback on pitches and investing in entrepreneurs.

Thapar, who is also the founding partner of Thapar Vision Fund – which invests in start-ups – lays out the criteria that matter most for her as an investor. She looks for founders with fire in their bellies, who are involved in a solving a deep-rooted problem, can demonstrate “a clear path to profitability with specific milestones and a robust action plan”, and who run a venture that can gain from her network and her expertise in manufacturing, global distribution, marketing and finance. She works with companies that make at least one to two crore rupees in annual sales. She has a policy of not investing in prototypes or pre-revenue ventures.

Thapar comes across as a humble leader who is looking to grow instead of resting on her laurels. She speaks of Shark Tank India as “a huge opportunity to impact and influence the masses of our country to respect and take on the entrepreneurial route.” At the same time, she acknowledges that the entrepreneurs who came on the show taught her more than she taught them. She readily admits to errors of judgement as well, and instances wherein she played safe though she could have taken risks. It is hard to imagine Ashneer Grover and Aman Gupta, her fellow sharks on Shark Tank India, engaging in such public self-reflection.

Thapar writes, “We need to champion not just founders who can scale and make money for us but also founders who have tremendous potential and are working on a real problem. They may just not have got the right mentorship to gain traction in their business.” She regrets not investing in Jugaadu Kamlesh and Pandurang Taware, two farmers from Maharashtra, who were appeared in Season 1. She invested in Taware’s agri-tourism company after the show.

Thapar believes that sharks ought to be bolder, and invest in these people. “Entrepreneurship should not just remain the dream of the ones with the right education and resources but also an ambition of the common man. This is one of our core responsibilities as business leaders who have been blessed with power and privilege and who people look up to,” she adds.

Published by Penguin Business, the book is now available in the market. The timing seems right since there is a substantial gap between Season 1 and Season 2 of Shark Tank India. The huge fan base that the show has built needs to be given something new to relish. This book fills that gap. In addition to a summary of all the pitches made by entrepreneurs on Season 1, it also gives readers a peek into what happened after the show. Apart from this, the book features an interview with showrunner Bimal Unnikrishnan on how to get selected for the show. The information and insights provided are relevant; they come from the horse’s mouth.

Thapar offers tips on making a good first impression, narrating one’s personal journey, being well-acquainted with numbers, mastering a negotiation style, and receiving feedback. She also explains the technicalities of term sheets, shareholder agreements, secretarial processes, and due diligence. She is honest about the fact that, in her case, some deals that seemed interesting on the show did not go through either because founders were not happy with the valuation of their companies or because there were “sticky issues of due diligence”.

This book might also resonate with entrepreneurs who are not freshers but need guidance on team building. Thapar writes, “We saw in several Shark Tank India pitches that there were a large number of co-founders and this was a concern. Are there too many decision makers and power centres that will create more complications than ease up running of the business.”

Thapar draws attention to the importance of defining roles clearly, resolving deadlocks, encouraging dissent, making it safe for people to fail and learn, and appreciating the contributions of all team members. She also writes about corporate governance, empathy, building brands, choosing excellence over scale, market research, and the role of mentors.

The book brings in other voices. It features interviews with Info Edge co-founder Sanjeev Bikhchandani known for investing in Zomato and PolicyBazaar, and Delhivery’s CEO Sahil Barua. Besides this, there are interviews with contestants from Season 1 – Sanskriti Dhawale, Aditi Gupta, Aishwarya Biswas and Ranodeep Saha. They build devices to teach Braille, create comics on menstrual health, make skincare products, and sell handicrafts respectively.

The best part of this book, however, is Thapar’s brief note on being kind. She recalls being invited to The Kapil Sharma Show along with her fellow sharks from Shark Tank India. When they were asked to talk about “any crazy pitch that stood out”, Thapar spoke about one that had to do with a “belly button shaper”. In hindsight, she feels that it was wrong on her part. She writes, “To act funny and cool, I made fun of an entrepreneur. What gives me the right to do that? It may have been an unrealistic and unviable idea to me, but here is a middle-class couple who had poured their life savings and efforts into this venture that they whole-heartedly believed in.” She feels “ashamed” for laughing at them on national television.

Her fellow shark, Ashneer Grover, might want to take notes because he was the worst when it came to destroying the confidence of entrepreneurs. He humiliated them in the name of tough love. As Thapar aka pharma queen rightly notes, “Very few can get thick-skinned, rise above these labels and have the grit and self-belief to keep pursuing their goals. If we cannot help someone, let’s at least not handicap them by labelling them. We need to lift and not label.”

Chintan Girish Modi is a writer, journalist and educator who tweets @chintan

Namita Thapar’s book The Dolphin and The Shark. Shark Tank India, Namita Thapar on Shark Tank India, Shark Tank India on Sony Entertainment Television_, BuzzPatrol, Buzz Patrol_