Shark Tank Judge Anupam Mittal at Masters’ Union | Learn to Build Scalable D2C Brands

Most entrepreneurship education in India borrows heavily from Silicon Valley case studies that have little to do with how consumer businesses actually work here. Then there are institutions like Masters' Union, where learning happens directly from the people who've built India's most iconic brands.

At the DLF Cyberpark campus, Anupam Mittal - Shark Tank India judge, founder of Shaadi.com, and one of India's earliest consumer internet pioneers - sat down with students for an unfiltered conversation about building D2C brands. Not the sanitized success story version. The actual mental models, the uncomfortable truths, and the frameworks he uses when evaluating whether a brand will survive or collapse.

What unfolded over the next two hours wasn't a lecture. It was a live dissection of how category-defining brands are really built.

The Shaadi.com Founder Who Built a Business Without a Plan

When Pratham Mittal, Founder and CEO of Masters' Union, asked Anupam how he knew Shaadi.com would work, his answer was disarmingly honest: "I didn't."

No detailed market sizing exercise. No five-year strategic roadmap. No comprehensive competitive analysis. The company that became synonymous with matrimony in India was built on instinct, cultural insight, and an obsessive focus on learning velocity over planning precision.

This revelation carried weight coming from someone who now evaluates startups on Shark Tank India. Here was an investor who regularly decides which founders get funded, telling a room full of aspiring entrepreneurs that data explains what already happened, but instinct helps you move before patterns become obvious to everyone else.

 

The principles Anupam outlined weren't abstract:

1. Act before certainty arrives. Waiting for complete information means someone else owns the category by the time you start.
2. Prioritize learning speed over planning depth. Markets change. Learning compounds.
3. Let users guide your decisions. Real feedback beats projections.
4. Avoid premature optimization. Perfect execution of the wrong thing is still failure.

For students at Masters' Union, these weren't motivational soundbites. They were operational principles that separate builders from analysts.

The Sagai.com to Shaadi.com Story: How One Word Changed Everything

The story behind the name change from Sagai.com to Shaadi.com revealed something fundamental about building for India.

"Shaadi" wasn't chosen through brand consultants or testing frameworks. It was chosen because every single person in India, regardless of language, region, or demographic, knows exactly what it means. That kind of cultural embeddedness doesn't come from creativity exercises. It comes from understanding how people actually communicate.

That single decision transformed the platform from just another website into the category itself.

Anupam's point was surgical: if people can't remember your name, repeat it to friends, or explain it to their parents, you're starting with an unnecessary handicap. Familiar words reduce adoption friction. Cultural resonance builds trust faster than any marketing campaign. Easy recall drives word-of-mouth. And in India, word-of-mouth remains the primary distribution channel for most consumer businesses.

This wasn't branding theory. This was pattern recognition from someone who's watched consumer internet companies succeed and fail for over two decades.

The Live D2C Workshop: Where Theory Met Reality

Rather than deliver a traditional presentation, Anupam transformed the session into a live evaluation exercise, the same methodology he applies when reviewing pitches on Shark Tank India.

Together with students, he dissected major D2C categories: fashion, beauty, FMCG, consumer durables, and home and living. Each category was interrogated not by market size (which anyone can Google), but by the fundamentals that determine long-term viability:

1. Purchase frequency and repeat behavior
2. Operational complexity versus creative leverage
3. Defensible margin structure
4. Distribution economics and discovery mechanisms

The conversation around fashion proved particularly revealing. While most students initially viewed fashion as attractive - large market, high engagement, Instagram-native - Anupam reframed the entire category.

Fashion appears creative but functions as an execution business. Inventory locks up capital. SKU proliferation creates complexity. Returns erode margins. Seasonal cycles compress decision windows. Success depends more on operational discipline than design aesthetics. You're not building a brand - you're optimizing a supply chain that happens to sell apparel.

When beauty and personal care entered the discussion, the energy shifted entirely.

Beauty operates on different economics. It's evergreen rather than seasonal. Aspiration-driven rather than utility-focused. A product with ₹20 in raw material costs can command ₹500 retail pricing if the brand narrative is compelling. Margins aren't determined by cost of goods, they're determined by perceived desirability.

Anupam wasn't declaring one category superior. He was emphasizing that founders need to understand which game they're actually playing. Operators might thrive in fashion's complexity. Storytellers might find leverage in beauty's brand economics. Misalignment between founder temperament and category dynamics is often the hidden reason promising startups stall.

This wasn't generic startup advice. This was the actual calculus a Shark Tank India judge performs when deciding whether to invest.

The Compounding Power of Frequency (That Nobody Talks About)

Throughout the session, Anupam returned repeatedly to one overlooked variable: frequency.

Not just purchase frequency, but interaction frequency. How often the brand enters a consumer's routine. How often it occupies mental space. How often it creates touchpoints for building memory and trust.

A skincare product used daily has exponentially more opportunities to deepen relationships than outerwear purchased annually. More touchpoints mean more chances to reinforce positioning, gather feedback, and make the brand feel indispensable rather than optional.

"Frequency compounds," Anupam explained. "Trust isn't built in single transactions. It accumulates over time. If your product only intersects with someone's life a few times per year, you're fighting physics."

This insight reveals why many well-funded D2C brands struggle with retention and customer acquisition costs. They optimize for transaction value instead of interaction frequency, then struggle to understand why loyalty never materializes and marketing efficiency never improves.

At Masters' Union, students are trained to identify these hidden variables. The dynamics that don't appear in pitch decks but ultimately determine whether businesses achieve sustainable scale.

The Premium Positioning Question That Divides Founders

When a student asked whether Indian D2C brands can truly command premium pricing, specially in competitive categories like menswear, Anupam delivered an unvarnished assessment.

Premium positioning in India isn't about mimicking Western aesthetics or adopting minimalist packaging conventions. It requires earning emotional relevance through time, consistency, and an identity clear enough that consumers want to pay more because of what the purchase signals about them.

But most brands sabotage premium positioning before it takes root. The mechanism? Discounting.

Every discount signals that the original price wasn't justified. It trains consumers to wait for sales. It undermines the value proposition before trust can develop. Premium perception at higher price points doesn't happen through shortcuts: influencer campaigns or limited-time offers. It develops through relentless consistency in product quality, brand voice, and controlled distribution.

"People don't buy premium products," Anupam noted. "They buy premium identities."

The distinction matters. Product features can be copied. Identity and association cannot.

Why Most D2C Launches Fail Before They Begin

The conversation evolved to address launch strategy, specifically how brands cut through noise in saturated categories where every platform competes for the same shrinking attention span.

Anupam's framework inverted conventional thinking: stop competing for wallets. Start competing for attention.

Day-one revenue is a vanity metric. What determines trajectory is whether people are talking. Whether curiosity is building. Whether the brand feels like a discovery rather than another option.

The most effective launches don't lead with product specifications. They lead with mystery, cultural timing, and problems articulated so clearly that by the time the solution appears, consumers are already mentally committed.

Build curiosity before revealing the product. Tease the tension, not the resolution.

Use cultural moments when attention is already concentrated. Timing creates leverage.

Prioritize conversation over conversion. Let desire build before attempting to scale.

This approach contradicts what most founders do. They launch quietly, hope for organic traction, then panic when nobody notices. Anupam's methodology reverses the sequence: earn attention first, then give people something to buy.

It's not manufactured hype. It's strategic attention arbitrage in an economy where attention is the scarcest resource.

Distribution as Brand Strategy (Not Just Logistics)

A question about distribution strategy for premium brands elicited one of the session's sharpest insights.

Where you sell determines how people perceive you.

A premium skincare brand available on every quick-commerce platform dilutes exclusivity. A menswear label accessible only through select flagship stores signals intentionality and curation. Scarcity isn't a limitation but a positioning tool.

Distribution decisions aren't purely operational. They're narrative choices.

Physical retail presence validates digital claims. Limited availability creates aspiration. The purchasing experience itself becomes part of the brand promise. Access becomes marketing.

This distinction separates brands that merely grow from brands that scale while maintaining perception. Growth is about reach. Scale is about preserving meaning as you expand. And meaning is shaped by control over where you appear, how you appear, and who gains access.

The Self-Awareness Test That Determines Longevity

Near the conclusion, Anupam shifted to founder psychology into a dimension that’s often overlooked in startup conversations.

Not every founder is built for operational complexity. Not every business should optimize for efficiency over creativity. The most common failure mode isn't choosing the wrong market, it's building a company misaligned with the founder's natural strengths and energy sources.

Some founders thrive managing high-frequency, low-margin businesses. Others excel in brand-led, high-margin categories. The critical question isn't which is better, but which matches who you actually are.

Misalignment leads to burnout. Strength-based businesses compound faster. Higher margins provide breathing room for iteration. Sustainable companies reflect their founders' nature and not only market opportunity.

This wasn't philosophical. It was diagnostic. Because the most overlooked reason startups fail isn't market timing or execution quality. It's founders building businesses that drain them rather than energize them.

What Actually Happened in That Room

Beyond the specific insights about D2C categories, brand positioning, and launch strategy, something more fundamental occurred during Anupam Mittal's session at Masters' Union.

Students didn't just hear about building brands. They experienced the exact thinking process a Shark Tank India judge employs when evaluating founders. The frameworks. The pattern recognition. The instincts that can't be extracted from case studies or textbooks.

That's the Masters' Union difference.

The institution doesn't bring speakers to inspire students through success stories. It brings practitioners to rewire how students think by exposing them to the actual mental models that successful founders use in real time.

This doesn't happen through webinars or recorded lectures. It happens in physical spaces where Shark Tank judges, category-defining founders, and operating executives become teachers—not just names on a curriculum.

For aspiring entrepreneurs, this represents a fundamentally different kind of education. Not polished presentations about what worked. Raw conversations about how decisions actually get made. Not theories about brand building. Direct access to the judgment frameworks that separate funded startups from rejected ones.

The Kind of Education That Shapes How You Think

Most business education teaches students what to think about entrepreneurship. Masters' Union teaches students how to think like entrepreneurs - by learning directly from people like Anupam Mittal who've built category-defining businesses and now evaluate founders professionally on Shark Tank India.

The institution's pedagogy isn't built on inspiration. It's built on immersion. On giving students access to practitioners who can demonstrate, in real time, how experienced builders analyze categories, evaluate opportunities, and make decisions under uncertainty.

When Shark Tank judges walk into classrooms at Masters' Union, they're not there to deliver motivational speeches. They're there to share the unfiltered frameworks they actually use - the kind of knowledge that only comes from building businesses, making investments, and watching patterns repeat across hundreds of companies.

For students who want to understand how D2C brands actually scale in India - not how textbooks say they should scale - this is what that education looks like.

Not theoretical. Not sanitized. Just direct pattern recognition from people who've survived the game long enough to know what actually works.

FAQs

Who is Anupam Mittal?
Anupam Mittal is the Founder and CEO of People Group and the founder of Shaadi.com. He is also an investor on Shark Tank India.

What was the Anupam Mittal fireside chat at Masters’ Union about?
The fireside chat focused on startup decision-making, D2C brand building, attention-led growth, distribution strategy, and lessons from building Shaadi.com in India.

What founder insights did Masters’ Union students gain?
Students were advised to align business choices with their temperament, prioritise attention over revenue, and build sustainable brands.

What did Anupam Mittal say about D2C brands in India?
He explained that successful D2C brands depend on frequency, operational discipline, and strong distribution, not just product ideas or marketing.

Why is founder self-awareness emphasised at Masters’ Union?
Understanding one’s strengths helps choose the right business model, avoid burnout, and build sustainable ventures.