‘You are not listening’: Anupam Mittal castigates AI founders on Shark Tank India after ‘screwed up’ equity split costs them a deal

Mohit pointed out that since YouTube and other big tech companies were providing auto-dubbing, how would their company keep up. Namita also wondered that they might become “irrelevant” as the tech improves. Ishan said that despite all the technological improvement, companies still want someone to check the quality of the dubbing because in case of an error, they might have to face some big problems. He presented that the human intervention in their company’s model was their unique selling proposition.

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Anupam asked them about ‘vubbing’ (visual dubbing), but the pitchers had no idea about it, which did not impress him. “You are not staying on top of technology trend,” he said and explained that in vubbing, one’s “facial movements are also optimised and it feels like you are actually talking in that language.” He asked that since the tech is moving that fast, they might get left behind. Ishan started answering but his answers were not relevant for this question and this irked Anupam. “You are not listening. Every question has to be repeated multiple times,” he said. After this, Ishan said that they are also building towards the same technology.

The pitchers were then asked about their equity split and this is when they announced that they had already given away 45.9 percent of the company to previous investors. Aman Gupta explained that he was out of the negotiations for this very reason. He said that they were “rightly placed to be the next big AI company” but he was getting out because the investors had completely screwed up their equity split. He recommended that they must get back some of their equity and raise at least Rs 10-20 crore so they can spend on marketing, business development team and improving their technology.

 

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Mohit Yadav also got out of the negotiations saying that while their work was “very impressive”, it still seemed like a “short term opportunity.” Kunal compared dubbing to subtitling and said that until a few years ago, people would pay for subtitles as well, but it is now an auto generated feature on many websites. He said that the same might happen in the field of dubbing as well. He also got out of the negotiations. Namita said that their tech could easily be replicated by any of the big tech players, which is why they must focus on global customers and make the most of their first mover advantage.

Anupam, however, had a different thought. He said that “humans will always be in the loop” but he then pointed out his problem with the business. “I had to explain every question to you at least 2-3 times. That’s a big pet peeve of mine. I can’t work in that situation, so I am out.” The pitchers walked away without a deal.