On December 20, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of The Quint, Ritu Kapur, fact-checked former NDTV reporter, anchor, and senior editor Ravish Kumar, stating that Adani Group has no ownership in her company.
In a tweet to the former NDTV journalist, Ritu said, “Requesting Ravish Kumar to check facts on his assertions on “sale of The Quint to Mr Advani” on The Wire. For the record: Adani does NOT have ANY ownership in The Quint. Journalistic due diligence was required or a Google search.”
Requesting @ravishndtv to check facts on his assertions on “sale of The Quint to Mr Advani” on @thewire_in . For the record: Adani does NOT have ANY ownership in The Quint. Journalistic due diligence was reqd or a google search https://t.co/OjVD067zPl
— Ritu Kapur (@kapur_ritu) December 20, 2022
Ravish Kumar has claimed Adani Group is investing in The Quint
During an interview with The Wire that was published on December 19, Ravish Kumar ranted against Adani Group and claimed that Adani bought NDTV to kick him out of the company. Kumar, who recently resigned from NDTV on his own, also claimed Adani earlier invested in The Quint, but it does not make any difference. He said, “He [Adani] invested in The Quint as well. What happened?”. Notably, during the interview, Kumar claimed he does proper research and follows journalistic ethics before reporting anything.
In the interview, Kumar also mentioned that crores of rupees (on the part of Adani) were being spent to ‘silence’ him. The journalist who quit NDTV, after the Adani Group bought a stake in NDTV’s promoter firm RRPR Holding, said that if Adani Group wanted to achieve the journalistic success they could have as they had bought shares in Quint, but nothing major came out of it.
Adani acquired a stake in Quintillion Business Media Pvt Ltd
On May 15, it was reported that Adani Group acquired 49 per cent stakes in Quintillion Business Media Pvt Ltd. The execution of the shareholders’ agreement was made public by the Adani group through a document on May 13 2022. AMG Media Networks Limited, a subsidiary of the Adani group, has acquired 49 per cent stakes in Quintillion Media Limited, Quintillion Business Media Limited, and Quint Digital Media Limited.
The document stated, “We would like to inform you that AMG MediaNetworks Limited (AMG Media), a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Company, has signed Shareholders’ Agreement with Quintillion Media Limited (QML) and Quintillion Business Media Limited (QBML) and Share Purchase Agreement with QML QBML and Quint Digital Media Limited (QDML) dated May 13, 2022, in connection with its proposed acquisition of 49% stake in QBML.”
Quint Digital Media Limited owns the English and Hindi portals of The Quint. QBM is a business and financial news company that covers content based on the Indian economy, international finance, corporate law & governance, and business news, amongst others, through its platform Bloomberg Quint which changed its name to BQ Prime on May 15, 2022. Earlier in November 2021, Quint Digital announced the acquisition of a 100% stake in Quintillion Business Media. Earlier this year, on March 1 2022, Adani group announced that it would acquire a minor stake in QBM.
This, however, means that Adani’s shares in BloombergQuint (BQ) are separate from other media subsidiaries of Quint Digital Media. BQ is owned by Quintillion Business Media, which is a subsidiary of Quint Digital Media. Therefore, the deal with Adani did not include other digital properties of Quint Digital Media, like as The Quint, Quintype Technologies, the News Minute and Youth Ki Awaaz.
