Ashneer Grover, Aman Gupta fuel Shark Tank meme explosion

Memes based on the business reality television show – where aspiring entrepreneurs make business pitches to a panel of angel investors, or ‘sharks’ –have taken over social media platforms such as LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram over the past month even as the show gained in popularity.

While its finale airs on Friday, the show is leaving behind a legacy of memes that have given its judges – comprising founders of some of the country’s most successful startups – a newfound world of fandom and celebrityhood, marketing and digital media experts said.

The meme factory behind the show has inspired Gen Z digital creators to post re-enactment of the sharks and birthed at least a dozen meme fan pages on Shark Tank on Instagram alone, a quick search on the photo and video sharing app reveals.

Brands like Zomato, Housing.com, and even MyGov, a citizen engagement platform of the government, have used the memes from the show for promotion, and messaging apps like WhatsApp have trending GIFs on the sharks.

But the biggest push for the memes has come from the sharks themselves, experts said. They are resharing memes, following back meme pages, and even collaborating with meme artists and creators to leverage the momentum to their advantage and personal branding.

Discover the stories of your interest

ETtech

Most downloaded Shark Tank meme templates

For the sharks, resharing and promoting the memes is also a way to build on their “public profiles” outside the show even after it ends.

“All of us have different images based on our personalities, and certain things have come out and clicked for different sharks in how the audience sees them – super aggressive, or likeable, chilled out, next-door guy,” one of the sharks in the show told ET, explaining the birth of the memes. “They (sharks) are now trying to build on that and extend their popularity on social media platforms for social currency.”

The person said they are likely to continue sharing memes on them as it has an overall positive and fun vibe.

Sharks on the show include BharatPe cofounder Ashneer Grover, Boat cofounder Aman Gupta, Emcure executive director of Namita Thapar, People Group founder Anupam Mittal, Lenskart cofounder Peyush Bansal, Mamaearth cofounder Ghazal Alagh, and Sugar cosmetics cofounder Vineeta Singh.

Krishna Mirpuri, creator of Instagram meme profile Memepuri.official, said he posted a meme on Shark Tank in an evening in the first week of January. It barely got any likes or comments that day and he went off to sleep thinking not many people watch the show. “The next day, I was just scrolling my phone randomly in the afternoon and I saw Aman Gupta had reshared all my memes on his feed and tagged me. It has been crazy ever since,” he told ET.

Mirpuri is a 25-year-old business graduate from Symbiosis Pune who works for a bank, and the meme page is his creative outlet. It has close to 17,000 followers including Namita Thapar.

His best-performing meme on Shark Tank has more than 20,000 likes, Mirpuri said.

The show and its characters were further popularised when comics and digital creators such as Mallika Dua, Kusha Kapila, Rohan Joshi, and Biswa Kalyan Rath created reels mimicking the sharks.

“Each shark has a pattern of how they talk and behave on the show, which is relatable to real life and makes it very meme-able,” said Pranjal Poddar, a LinkedIn content creator with over 70,000 followers.

ETtech

Experts share what’s making the show and the investors viral on social media.

While Grover’s dismissiveness to ideas reminds youngsters of the sceptical uncle in their family, the repeated usage of “yeh meri expertise nahi hai” by Thapar led to the creation of one of the most popular memes from the show, he said.

Multiple creators ET spoke with said sharks playing along has encouraged the meme machinery as most celebrities are not so receptive to memes and jokes on them.

“When we (young) people see that these sharks are taking this humour so well, it leaves a good impression of the shark,” said Poddar who uses memes to talk about startups, finance, and internships on the professional networking platform. “When Anupam (Mittal) himself is in a video when Biswa (Rath) is mimicking him, obviously there is a feeling that he is cool because any way in this country no one takes the humour so well, that is the atmosphere.”

After Rath’s imitation of Mittal went viral,
Mittal himself collaborated with Rath in a series of videos on Instagram.

Rohan Joshi did a YouTube live video with Gupta and Thapar, which crossed 1.3 million views. In the hour-long discussion, the group scrolled through some of the popular memes, including Mirpuri’s memes, which further created its own flurry of memes. Mallika Dua’s 90-second mimicry of Thapar – who reposted it on her profile – has over 300,000 views and Joshi’s meme on the sharks has over 400,000 views.

Gupta, Grover, and Thapar frequently share memes on their social profiles.

According to IndianMemeTemplates, which has one of the largest databases of Indian memes, Shark Tank India meme templates were downloaded more than 60,000 times from the website between January 8 and 31.

“Ye sab doglapan hai” – a one-liner by Grover – was the first meme to go viral in the first week of January and became the third most downloaded meme template on the website. “Hum bhi bana lenge” (Gupta), “Expertise nahi hai” (Thapar), and “Mai aapko sharminda nahi karna chahta” (Mittal) are other popular templates on the website.

Era of celebrity entrepreneur:

Social media engagement of some of these sharks has increased significantly in recent weeks. Marketing executives told ET they are marketing mavericks who know the language of young people and how to use it to their advantage.

ETtech

Social engagement has shot up

“Ultimately, it’s all branding and PR, and we know it’s impossible to remain relevant without people taking the conversation forward… Memes are the best way and Shark Tank cracked it in the first week,” said a marketing executive who didn’t want to be named.

“Yes, the funding terms are weird. Yes, the sharks seem overly exuberant about their ability to fund. Yes, their suggestions are weird. But I think it’s a net positive and memes are key to take this concept mainstream. Why else would they show up on Kapil Sharma?”

While sharks Gupta, Grover, Mittal, and Thapar have gained popularity for their personality and humour, Lenskart’s Bansal has earned goodwill for backing social impact startups.

ETtech

Post by Peyush Bansal, cofounder Lenskart, on explaining his investment in KG Agrotech

Source: Peyush Bansal, LinkedIn post

Bansal’s investment in a pre-revenue agriculture startup KG Agrotech garnered him a lot of love, and some called it “wholesome content”. His recent LinkedIn post explaining the decision to invest in the startup received over 50,000 likes. Compare that with his older posts which have a few thousand likes at best.

“With the sharks sharing their own memes, it is really making them into a proper celebrity influencer,” said Tanisha Fagwani, cofounder of Stonks Studios, an internet marketing content house. “The image we have of most businesspeople is them talking about their achievements or how big they made a project. When sharks bring memes into conversations, it is really benefiting their personal brand. Many of the cofounders (on the show) were not as popular before the show aired. It is also beneficial for their brand,” she said.

Interestingly, Boat posted a job link using one of Gupta’s popular memes while recruiting for – guess what – a memer.

Digital creators say the memes from the show may outlast Shark tank India.

“Every decade has made a celebrity out of a new reality industry. With Shark Tank, people will now look up to entrepreneurship,” said Harsh Upadhyay who created Shark Tank Memes page (ek.aur.memerr) on Instagram a week ago and already counts Gupta among its followers. “It is one of those shows which will stay relevant even after it’s over.”