Anupam Mittal and Vineeta Singh criticise vacation wear brand that Aman Gupta invests in Shark tank India Season 4.
There is a reason why swimming with the sharks is seen as a dangerous thing.
So what happens when the founders of Woman Like U, a vacation wear brand, primarily focused on swimwear, decided to pitch in season 4 of the Indian version of the Shark Tank? Well, they did swim with the ‘sharks’, albeit with nice designer wear. Bengaluru-based start up Women Like U was pitched as a clothing brand made to address the issue of differing body types for Indian women.
The startup, founded by Abu Zoheib Jilani and Shrijal Dave, catered to a clientele wanting to take pride in their body types, and find vacation wear that fit them right. In fact, the brand promised to have coding in place to ensure women can understand their body type by answering a simple set of questions, and choose the right kind of fit from a curated list of products. While the ‘sharks’ – Aman Gupta, Anupam Mittal, Vineeta Singh, Peyush Bansal, and Varun Dua – were quite impressed with the pitch and the products on display, it was far from a stroll in the park for team Woman Like U, who asked for Rs 1 crore for 2% equity with a valuation of Rs 50 crore.
Vineeta Singh revealed that she was a customer of that brand, and was quite impressed with the design and material. Interestingly, Anupam Mittal put forth a pertinent point about how the brand, which prides itself on the diversity and inclusivity of the various body types of Indian women, which cannot be regularised under the Western sizes, was doing something similar with respect to Indian sizes. He argued, “Using the same lexicon like pear-shaped, oval, heart-shaped, etc… aren’t you still objectifying women? If you really want to be anti-discriminatory, you have to use different language.” This was vehemently agreed upon by Vineeta, who had another problem with the words used by the company.
And the words she had the problem with was… ‘Woman Like U’. Vineeta outrightly dismissed the brand name as ‘cheap-sounding’ and felt it wasn’t really appealing to the clientele who would look at this brand as an aspirational luxury option. “I hate the brand name and logo and the spelling…” Although, sharks like Varun Dua and Peyush Bansal were impressed with the profit figures of the brand, they excused themselves from the deal because of various issues ranging from positioning, absence of vision in category expansion to lack of clarity.
Interestingly, both Anupam Mittal and Aman Gupta negated Vineeta Singh’s opinions about the branding and the logo, and said that these were subjective opinions, and they quite bought the simplistic nature of the branding. Nevertheless, Vineeta made an offer of Rs 1 crore for 3% equity plus 2 % royalty until Rs 1.5 crore is recouped, and Aman pitched in with a similar offer but till Rs 1 crore was recouped. Oh, and Vineeta’s one stipulation was… “Change the brand name and the logo.”
That was an offer that team Woman Like U could refuse, and that’s what they did. They chose Aman as their investor, and went with their hearts full, wallets comparatively full, and pride intact. In closing, Vineeta pointed out that the brand name has no emotion, and feels like a name churned out by an algorithm. “For a lifestyle brand, the name is everything. SUGAR, bOAt… the names mean everything. The founders are so rigid.”
But before leaving, the pragmatic founders said, “We received overwhelmingly positive response. The name is close to our heart, and of course, we took a lot of data before arriving on this name. We do understand that there are people who might feel similar to Vineeta, but the branding has received mostly positive responses.” What’s in a name? Shakespeare once asked. And on this episode, Vineeta did the same.
