Shark Tank India’s Anupam Mittal spoke about his high-spending lifestyle when he was working in the US before he lost all his ‘paper wealth’ and relocated to India. It was then that he helped take Shaadi.com to greater heights. Anupam became a household name after appearing in the first season of the reality show Shark Tank India.
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In an interview with Mashable India, Anupam recalled how he went to the US for higher education, and became infatuated with the work culture there. “Some of us kids got together and started a venture called Strategy.com, just before the dot com boom. And we became worth $40 billion. We were multi-millionaires in our early 20s, at least on paper.”
He continued, “It was so intoxicating, we never thought we’d lose it. And against that paper wealth, we starting taking out loans to buy more stock. When the meltdown happened, we cancelled our Ferraris. We ended up owing people. But when we had money, we had a blast. We used to rent out entire football stadiums just for parties. We used to rent out cruise ships. Our company would be shut for a week, and we’d be chilling on three cruise ships. It was a different level. But when the meltdown happened in 2000, jeb mein do kaudi nahi bachi.”
When he returned to India and tried to start up again, he remembered how some relatives would criticise him for squandering his father’s hard-earned money and looking at a gift horse in the mouth by trying to do his own thing. It was quite a frustrating time, he said, but he once again experienced the kind of financial highs that left him in a position where he didn’t know what to do with his vast wealth.
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When Shaadi.com started blowing up, Anupam said, he was earning Rs 20 lakh to Rs 30 lakh in profit every month. He said, “We didn’t know what to do with the money. I bought cars, bought a house, but didn’t have the understanding of how to manage wealth. I had no idea what to do next.”
Anupam was joined on the first season of Shark Tank India by Ashneer Grover, Peyush Bansal, Ghazal Alagh, Namita Thapar, Vinita Singh and Aman Gupta. A second season of the show is in the works.
