Shark Tank India judge Namita Thapar, Executive Director of Emcure Pharma, was recently likened to Bollywood actor Ananya Panday by author Ankit Uttam. He said that it was her father who founded the business, implying that she is basically a product of nepotism, who hasn't done the back-breaking work of building a company from ground zero. Uttam, who is said to be a bestselling Amazon author, claimed on a LinkedIn post that basically all of the sharks' companies have been facing a loss, and that they are not the best people to advise budding entrepreneurs about handling a business. Ankit Uttam said that Vineeta Singh's SUGAR Cosmetics incurred a loss of Rs 75 crore in financial year of 2022. Meanwhile, Peyush Bansal's company Lenskart suffered a loss of Rs 102.3 crore in FY22. Amit Jain's CarDekho reported losses of Rs 246.5 crore in FY22. According to the writer, the only businessman out of the 'sharks' who had seen a profit last year was Aman Gupta, co-founder of boAt. Uttam then went on to compare Namita Thapar with Ananya Panday, writing, "It's her (Namita's) father who started it and still is its CEO. So her credentials seem similar to that of Ananya Pandey in Bollywood." The writer's comparison was not met with a positive response online, as one person commented on the post, "You are discrediting Namita just because she had inherited a company. By that logic, don’t you think promoters of all the top Indian conglomerates will be disqualified, including Mukesh Ambani and Ratan Tata." Another user mentioned, "The businesses in India are way different. Why didn't you mention the losses of the counterparts and then think about the comparison?" Recently, Namita Thapar made news after she claimed that her house-help had shared a 'hateful post' regarding her being a bad mother and a bad wife. The initial post suggested that it was her son who had hacked into Namita's account and shared the Instagram story. Thapar, along with other 'sharks' like Anupam Mittal, Aman Gupta, Amit Jain, Vineeta Singh and Peyush Bansal, is currently seen on Sony TV's reality show Shark Tank India Season 2.
