What “Shark Tank” says about Indian capitalism

SPEAK TO THE bankers and industrialists at the top of India’s economic pyramid and you hear a common refrain. All Indians, they contend, are at heart socialists—themselves included. The popularity of the Indian version of “Shark Tank”, a TV celebration of capitalism (similar to “Dragons’ Den” in Britain) in which ordinary people seek funding for their business ideas from a gaggle of successful entrepreneurs, suggests that this conventional view may be out of date. The show’s 36-episode run, wrote the Hindustan Times, shifted the topic of dinner conversations throughout the vast country from cricket to business plans. Terms like “gross profit” and “TAM” (total addressable market) have entered common parlance among its 1.4bn people.