As 'Shark Tank Season 4' is set to premiere on SonyLIV, we get chatty with Namita Thapar and Vineeta Singh!

Shark Tank India Season Four is all set to go live on January 6 and we catch up with our two favourite judges Namita Thapar and Vineeta Singh for a quick chat on what to expect, what it means to be female sharks on the show, what entrepreneurship can mean today and lots more. We also shift the focus to mental health and juggling it all. Excerpts from the interview:

Season Four of Shark Tank India is finally here, what is it going to be like?

Namita Thapar: Season Four is going to be all about incredible entrepreneurs coming from different parts of India from a diverse set of industries and they will entertain, educate and inspire, as always. The fun part is that the drama between the sharks continue, which is also nice and is very authentic. We also have Kunal Bahl, who is a new shark and I must say I have been blown away by him. I got insights from diverse industries because of his portfolio. So I, at a personal level, learned a tremendous amount from him.

Vineeta Singh: I think Season Four will be incredible. Lots of very young founders. It’s the first time in four seasons that we’ve met at least eight to ten founders who were below the age of 20. It just gives us an indication of where new India is going. This time, we’ve also been able to get companies from really small towns and villages, including companies from the Northeast. So, yes, we’ve been stepping up the game in terms of quality of founders and quality of businesses.

For both of you, personally, what does it mean to be on a platform like Shark Tank?

Namita: I think, for me, personally, I found my voice here. Earlier, I would not speak up as much. I’ve learned to speak up a lot more. I’ve learned to bust taboos in public a lot more. I was always direct and unfiltered as a person and very proud of it. But, I took it to another level at Shark Tank. The show truly helped me find a new voice and a new persona over the years.

Vineeta: For me, let me give you an example: we meet these seven, eight year old girls at airports, at malls, who come up and say, “I want to become an entrepreneur.” They have their mom standing next to them nodding in agreement — that’s such a brilliant change for me all thanks to the show. Because growing up, we didn’t have role models. We didn’t have women who we could see and be like: I want to be that. And role models really matter.

The both of you are proving that you can have it all, like you can look like a million bucks and also be a great businessperson — how do you manage this?

Namita: Not everyone’s a Namita, let me just say this (laughs). But, I definitely don’t have it all. We have our rough days too. I definitely don’t look like this without somebody working on me for a couple of hours with my hair and makeup. So, let’s be very realistic about what we’re talking about here. People need to internalise that nobody wakes up looking like this. We’ve had people and experts who we’ve paid a lot of money to, to make us look like this.

Vineeta: I just want to say four words: shukar hain, sugar hai! (laughs)

You both lead extremely stressful lives, but you don’t seem to show it to anyone. How do you cope with stress in terms of business, your personal lives, all of these commitments and juggling them so well?

Namita: It was a very big struggle for me and there are actually only two things that I do. They’ve really helped me become a much happier person. First, I delete toxic people from my life. If I feel that somebody is disrespectful or I’m not really liking their work ethic or their personality. I just delete them. I don’t want to waste my time with toxic people. Doing that has simplified my life so much. Secondly, I find pockets of silence multiple times during the day. I just shut my office door or at home I’ll just go shut myself in a room. I need to be just by myself in silence to give myself a little bit of a mental reset.

Vineeta: For me, the one thing that I’ve been consistently doing has been running. I feel that it doesn’t matter whether you run or you walk, but just going out there in the sun without a device, even if it’s like for half an hour a day, it just really helps in putting things in perspective.

Watch the full interview on our YouTube channel. Shark Tank Season 4 premieres on January 6 on SonyLIV.

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