Siblings Aditi and Ashish Jawa pitched their skincare brand on Shark Tank India for Rs 1.2 crore for 1% equity. They faced criticism and defended themselves on a podcast.
Vineeta Singh is a judge on Shark Tank India.
Siblings Aditi and Ashish Jawa stepped onto the Shark Tank India stage in January, pitching their skincare brand Personal Touch for Rs 1.2 crore in exchange for 1% equity. However, their presentation quickly turned sour when they faced harsh criticism, with accusations of “manipulating sales figures” and Vineeta Singh declaring that ‘daal mein kuch kaala hai.’
A month after the episode, the siblings recounted what really happened on Ayushman Pandita’s podcast. Ashish explained the tense moment when questions were raised about their sales, saying, “When the questions were raised about our sales figures, I wanted to ensure that we don’t walk out of the show without proving our credibility. That is why I said that we’d show our Shopify dashboard to show Vineeta Singh and the other sharks that our numbers weren’t fake.”
He recalled being forced to wait for an hour in front of multiple cameras—a segment they weren’t informed would air—adding, “When we came in from the green room, we saw that there were camera in our faces, and we were asked to sit and show our Shopify dashboard. You must understand that people can go numb in such situations, especially when we have built a Rs 35 crore business, and we are told that there is something fishy about it. We wanted to show that we were honest people.”
Aditi then commented on the rapid assumptions made, saying, “In the heated moment, it is not possible for everyone to pause and look at the dashboard and understand the particulars, right? Vineeta just started assuming, and bashing our startup,” while Ashish fired back, “Without any backing whatsoever, they claimed our per day numbers are our per month numbers, and the whole narrative was changed. See, we can’t fight anyone sitting at that chair. It is their prerogative to invest in a company. But why fault others if you are not interested and create a completely different narrative?”
Aditi, visibly emotional, summed up their ordeal by saying, “Imagine getting bashed after putting in 20 hours a day for two years straight, and building a Rs 35 crore business. We kept telling them that our numbers weren’t fake, but…”
