Shark Tank India Season 3 is a return to form and some welcome friction

There are 12 judges or sharks on Shark Tank India Season 3, including Aman Gupta (boAt), Vineeta Singh (Sugar Cosmetics), Ritesh Agarwal (OYO Rooms), Anupam Mittal (shaadi.com) and Peyush Bansal (Lenskart). (Screen grab/YouTube/Shark Tank India)

There is a sequence from the second episode of Shark Tank India 3, where Zomato founder Deepinder Goyal, the newest Shark on the panel, schools a couple of pitchers in the basics of communication. There are spelling mistakes, punctuation errors galore and Goyal calls them out with the middle-age snippiness of someone who can’t accommodate negligence. “Why should you have the right to be on TV?” he asks coldly, in what is an affirmation of the gap Goyal might eventually fill. It feels like Ashneer Grover’s ghost has stepped back into the tank, as some welcome snarl is re-introduced into a programme that had somewhat lost both its edge and sharpness in an also-ran second season. With new founders and a bucket full of new ideas, Shark Tank India returns to take that enviable slot of primetime highbrow reality TV entertainment.

The third season has come in the wake of muted funding trends, layoff season, and some truly unsettling discoveries about some of the space’s superstars. Only this week, Byju’s, once the poster child of a hot segment, posted eye-opening numbers. Whatever the stakes and fallouts of this reality, though, as entertainment, start-ups are still fertile territory.

Since its ground-breaking first season, Shark Tank India has inspired not just streaming and TV imitations but also state-backed enterprises. It’s safe to say that the format, its satisfying mix of innovation, crunching numbers and the broader wrapper of education remains as intriguing as ever.

It’s hard to say if anything has massively transformed from the formative season. Most of the judges are familiar faces and therefore offer that comforting presence of legacy. The show is already becoming part of corporate literature, with things the sharks have said being revisited and gurgled with precision. “Har dhande ka ek gunda hota hai,” a candidate says, in a throwback to Aman Gupta’s (CEO of boAt) statement from a previous season. It indicates a calculated attempt at building the show’s own heritage as this beacon of entrepreneurial possibilities.

Interestingly, the show continues to address its audience by simplifying itself. There are explainers about complex financial terms, start-up buzzwords and the welcome addition this season of even examining investment strategies (why deals are structured the way they are). To its credit, Shark Tank India doesn’t just want to perform and flee, but also help the common audience understand and access its material. In essence, it’s a show trying to expand its footprint by educating. Sounds like a win-win.

Not every addition to the roster, and the show’s broader design, however, adds zip. Rahul Dua as the invisible host is a mystifying, at times frustrating filler. He continues to appear in what look like branding segments - painful exercises in stretching water breaks to money minting holes. In the third season, Dua chats with the founders, asks them questions sent by viewers, but it’s still an unconvincing application of a stand-up comedian, positioned to maybe introduce some humour to the show. That humour, still flows from the judges, their unscripted and maybe instinctual reaction to pitches and their nervy tactics. In fact, culling that fat and replacing it with something more meaningful, or pithy might do the experience more good than harm.

Shark Tank India also faces another problem. It’s now ground zero for entrepreneurs eyeing fame on both sides of the pitch. The judges from previous seasons have already become household names, which means the show, irrespective of what transpires in the background, is as much a shot to fame for the ones writing the cheques as it is a window of opportunity for those seeking them. It creates this welcome problem of having given birth a golden goose that everyone wants to get a piece of. Nothing wrong with piggybacking a cultural moment, but it does raise the question of sincerity. Is this a show to back entrepreneurs or a moderated exercise in vanity? Wherever that moral compass points to, it does swivel on this daze of gratifying entertainment. At least it’s a step up from the dating and dancing reality TV spiel we have been subjected to in the past.

Judging this season of Shark Tank India against previous ones is tricky. There are possibly markers that the show intends to reclaim. Can it, for example, create another ‘Jugaadu Kamlesh’? Which kind of pinpoints the media-savvy generation the show is playing out in front of. To a restless generation looking beyond the safety net of jobs and white-collar work, it’s the perfect amalgamation of aspiration, hustle and front-row fame. Which means the rise is as glorious as the fall is scandalous.

Consequently, the start-up story, if nothing else, is box-office. It only makes sense that something so absorbing in reality, has a close cousin on TV trying to stoke the fires, push the envelope and invite that calculated bite into recklessness. It’s unlikely to become dull and stale anytime soon.

Shark Tank India Season 3 is streaming on SonyLIV