Lenskart’s co-founder and CEO, Peyush Bansal, took us back to 2010 when he pitched his company Lenskart in the finale week of the TV show Shark Tank India. He asked for ₹1 Crore for a 1% stake in the company. This made us wonder what the other judges were doing back in 2010, and here’s what we found out.
1. Peyush Bansal was working on Flyrr.
Peyush Bansal is the co-founder and CEO of Lenskart. He is also a judge on the TV show Shark Tank India. In 2010, before starting Lenskart, he was working on his venture Flyrr. He started Flyrr back in June 2009. It was the same concept as Lenskart, but he was focussing on the US market.
In November 2010, Peyush Bansal replicated the same model as Flyrr in India and launched Lenskart, and the rest is history.
2. Ashneer Grover was VP at Kotak Investment Banking.
Shark Tank India judge Ashneer Grover is the MD and co-founder of BharatPe. But before he started BharatPe in 2018 with Shashvat Nakrani, he had worked in different job roles. Back in 2010, Ashneer Grover was the Vice President at Kotak Investment Banking.
3. Anupam Mittal was producing movies.
Anupam Mittal is the only judge on Shark Tank India who had already started his business way before 2010. He is the founder and CEO of People’s Group that has created businesses like Shaadi.com and Makaan.com. He is also a film producer and produced movies called Flavors and 99 back in 2009.
4. Vineeta Singh was a director at Quetzal.
Shark Tank India judge Vineeta Singh was a Director of a company called Quetzal Verify Private Limited. She started working at the company in 2007 and worked there till 2012. After working at Quetzal for 5 years, she started her own venture, called Fab Bag in 2012, and Sugar Cosmetics in 2015.
5. Namita Thapar was the CFO of Emcure Pharmaceutical.
Namita Thapar is currently the Executive Director of Emcure Pharmaceutical. Back in 2010, she was working as the Chief Financial Officer (CFO) of the company. She is a Chartered Accountant and has also done her MBA from Fuqua School of Business, Duke University, North Carolina.
6. Aman Gupta was doing his MBA.
Back in 2010, Shark Tank India judge Aman Gupta was studying MBA at the Indian School of Business. He did one year of his MBA from there and then moved to Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management in an exchange program. He started boAt in 2016.
7. Ghazal Alagh was doing her BCA.
Shark Tank India judge Ghazal Alagh completed her Bachelor in Computer Application from Panjab University in 2010. She also worked as a Corporate Trainer at NIIT Limited from 2008 to 2010. She co-founded Mamaearth in 2016, and is currently the Chief Innovation Officer.
Well, we can say the Shark Tank India judges have come a long way!
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