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Sony Entertainment Television’s show Shark Tank India started in 2021 as a platform providing entrepreneurs a way to reach a wider audience. Over its tenure of three seasons, the show has had its share of controversies and the issues only seem to continue much later after the latest season too. Recently, a founder of a nutritional food brand Fit & Flex accused the channel of unjustly targeting them for trademark violations. As per some media reports, Pathik Patel has also sent a legal notice to the channel over the suspension of their ad account.
In a post on LinkedIn, Pathik Patel wrote, “Feels really sad to see this, but wasn’t left with a choice either! It has been 50 days of zero D2C business and all we get to hear is “We won’t do anything”. We recently aired on Shark Tank S3- on the 15th of March which was a dream come true, but what followed has turned into a nightmare. Despite our joy at being featured on national television, our happiness was short-lived.”
The post further read, “Sony Entertainment Television has unjustly targeted us for trademark violations without any prior notice. They have striked our social media posts containing clips from the shark tank episode and have gone ahead and blocked our Ad account, unpublished our Facebook page, and disabled the collaboration feature on our brand’s account as well as on my account. No prior notice or warning was sent to us. Ideally we have aired in the episode, which we could use for marketing purposes for 3 months from the said date (as per their guidelines), but our content was pulled down within 25 days, after which we ceased to run all shark tank clips on organic as well as paid posts.”
Pathik Patel brings Fit and Flex on Shark Tank India (Photo: Pathik Patel / LinkedIn)
Further talking about violations from the channel, Pathik Patel added, “We have been writing to both Meta and Sony daily since, to help us with a solution, but haven’t received any resolution. We don’t want to use any clips for marketing and just want our original accounts back. All we want is someone from the SONY Team to talk to us and help solve this amicably but sadly not a single party (Sony Legal or Shark Tank) chose to reply. Not only me but more than 70 plus brands are facing these challenges. While we were shown a bigger picture of getting up to 5X & 7X of growth, the Shark Tank experience has in fact got us a huge loss in business and a downfall of almost 10-12X.”
“As the founder of Fit and Flex, I’ve poured my heart and soul into building our brand from the ground up, and this is extremely disheartening to see that massive media houses are harassing startup brands,” the Shark Tank India pitcher added.
While Patel did not strike a deal on the show, he had earlier also described his experience as daunting. He had even faced some serious scrutiny from Deepinder Goyal and Anupam Mittal while on the show. He was upset over just a 15-minute clip being featured on the show, he had written on LinkedIn, “But as they say….partial knowledge is always more dangerous than NO knowledge! A 15-minute edited video can only showcase that much and hence will use my platforms to debunk some popular myths! As an athlete and health-conscious foodie myself I have always been very sincere and true to my brand ethos and will not let a 15-minute clip raise questions about 5 years of my and my team’s hard work.”
He had also written, “As I continue on this entrepreneurial path, I carry with me the lessons learned from my Shark Tank India experience. It’s not just about seeking investment; it’s about seizing opportunities, embracing challenges, and never losing sight of the passion that fuels our journey.”
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