Meet Shark Tank India's new shark, born in Pakistan, attempted suicide at 22, now leads Rs 1 lakh crore company

After the two super successful seasons, the third season of the business reality series Shark Tank India is set to stream on SonyLIV from January 22. The latest season will see a total of twelve sharks, including six new business icons, and one of them is Radhika Gupta. She is the MD and CEO of Edelweiss Mutual Fund, one of the leading mutual fund firms in India.

Radhika was born in Pakistan where she had complications at birth and ended up with a broken neck. Since her dad was an Indian Foreign Service official, she lived in several places including Pakistan, Delhi, Nigeria, and New York. She is an alumnus of the Jerome Fisher Program in Management and Technology at the University of Pennsylvania, from where she attained the dual degress of computer science and economics.

She faced several job rejections in her life and even attempted suicide. " At 22, when I got my 7th job rejection, I looked out the window & said, 'I’ll jump.' My friend called for help! I was wheeled into a psychiatric ward, & diagnosed as depressed. The only reason they let me go was because I said, ‘I have a job interview–it’s my only shot.’ And that day, I bagged the job at McKinsey", Radhila told Humans of Bombay in an interview.

After the global financial crisis in 2008, she moved back to India and started her own asset management firm called Forefront Capital Management in Mumbai with her husband and friend. A few years later, her firm was acquired by Edelweiss Mutual Fund. She quickly climbed the corporate ladder and now heads the Rs 1 lakh crore company.

Known as "the girl with the broken neck", Radhika became one of the youngest CEOs in the nation at the age of 33. As per Mint, "Radhika joined Edelweiss Asset Management Co. as Chief Executive Officer in 2017. At the time, the fund house had assets of ₹9,128 crore. This figure has grown to ₹1,01,406 crore in January 2023".

Apart from Radhika Gupta, the other sharks in Shark Tank India season 3 are Aman Gupta (Co-Founder and CMO, boAt), Amit Jain (CEO and Co-founder, CarDekho, and InsuranceDekho), Anupam Mittal (Founder and CEO, Shaadi.com - People Group), Namita Thapar (ED, Emcure Pharmaceuticals), Vineeta Singh (Cofounder and CEO, SUGAR Cosmetics), Peyush Bansal (Founder and CEO, Lenskart.com), Ritesh Agarwal (Founder and CEO, OYO Rooms), Deepinder Goyal (Founder and CEO, Zomato), Ronnie Screwvala (Co-founder and Chairperson, Upgrad), Varun Dua (Founder and CEO, Acko General Insurance) and Azhar Iqubal (Co-Founder and CEO, Inshorts).

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