The Personality Rights Battle: When Startup Founders Become Celebrities

by · Inc42

SUMMARY

  • Indian courts are extending personality rights protections from celebrities to startup founders like Aman Gupta as founders become public personalities through platforms like Shark Tank India
  • The rise of AI deepfakes and online scams has made founders’ identities commercially valuable and legally vulnerable, prompting courts to protect names, voices, images, and catchphrases
  • The trend also raises concerns over free speech, parody, and how much control public figures should have over their public personas
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For most of India’s legal history, personality rights were concerns largely reserved for film stars and cricketers. Amitabh Bachchan went to court over the unauthorised use of his voice, which intuitively made sense given that he is among the country’s most recognisable public figures. 

But Aman Gupta? Why would the founder of a consumer electronics brand need to approach the Delhi High Court to restrain third parties from exploiting his personality rights without permission? 

The HC recently granted Gupta an interim injunction protecting him against the unauthorised use of his name, image, voice, catchphrases, and AI-generated deepfake content. 

Importantly, Gupta is not the first startup founder to pursue such protection. Before him, former BharatPe cofounder Ashneer Grover secured trademarks for his name, image, and signature phrases such as “Ye sab doglapan hai”. 

However, unlike Bollywood celebrities, startup founders did not become public figures through conventional entertainment routes. Take boAt, the company Gupta cofounded with Sameer Mehta. The company makes affordable earphones and smartwatches — a successful consumer business but not the reason Gupta became a recognisable public personality. 

That transformation happened through platform visibility. When Shark Tank India premiered in late 2021, it did something unusual for Indian startups — it made startup founders compelling personalities in their own right. Audiences were not only watching pitches but also the founders — their personalities, disagreements, reactions, and catchphrases.

Gupta, in particular, cultivated something most Indian entrepreneurs had never seriously attempted before — a television persona. He had energy, strong opinions, and memorable one-liners that were repeatedly clipped and circulated online, and phrases such as “Baat to suno” became a part of internet culture. His Instagram following surged, and he increasingly appeared at conferences not just to discuss boAt, but because he himself had become the attraction. 

This is how the businessman became a brand. Shark Tank showed that such stardom no longer calls for acting talent or sporting success; even business acumen counted. 

Notably, Indian courts have increasingly held that a person’s name, likeness, voice, signature, and associated persona are protectable under a combination of tort law, passing off, and the constitutional right to privacy. 

There is no dedicated statute governing personality rights in India. Instead, protections have evolved gradually through case law, drawing partly from the “right of publicity” doctrine developed in the US courts. The Gupta order expands this evolving framework further by explicitly covering AI-generated deepfake content.