Who owns Quint? Not Adani says CEO Ritu Kapur, asks Ravish Kumar to fact check

‘Adani does NOT have ANY ownership in The Quint’ CEO Ritu Kapur on Tuesday took to micro blogging platform Twitter to clarify facts about the English and Hindi language Indian general news and opinion media house.

“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 required or a google search” Kapur wrote on Twitter. 

The tweet comes in retaliation to former NDTV journalist Ravish Kumar's interview with Karan Thapar, published on The Wire, where the Magsaysay Award winner (2019) has explained why he chose to resign from NDTV.

During the interview, Kumar 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 stake in NDTV's promoter firm RRPR Holding, said that if Adani Group wanted to achieve journalistic success they could have as they had bought shares in  Quint, but nothing major came out of it. 

Ravish Kumar said, “News Channel se mahaan patrakarita karni hi thi to Quint mein bhi paise dalein gaye the, Quint ne kitni mahan patrakarita kar di?” claiming that Adani has shares in the company Quint Digital Media. 

The Quint- History

Raghav Bahl and Ritu Kapur in 2014, ended their shareholdings in the Network18 media conglomerate after the Reliance Industries takeover, exited the same and formed a digital news media company- Quintillion Media.

The Quint was launched on social media platform Facebook in January 2015 and by March the same year, it launched an independent website.

Who funds The Quint?

According to the media outlet's website The Quint is owned by Quint Digital Media Limited. The official statement also mentions that the company is listed on the BSE Limited.

Raghav Bahl and Ritu Kapur are the Promoters of Quint Digital Media Limited. The Quint Digital Media Limited was formerly knows as Gaurav Mercantiles Limited.

Does Adani have a stake in Quint?

In June, 2022, it was reported that AMG Media Networks (AMG Media), which is the media arm of Adani Group, had bought a 49% stake in Quintillion Business Media. It is to be noted that Quintillion Business Media operates business news platform BloombergQuint (BQ).

However, this also means that Adani's shares in BloombergQuint (BQ) is separate from other media subsidiaries of Quint Digital Media. BQ is owned by Quintillion Business Media, which is a subsidiary of Quint Digital Media.

This being said, the deal with Adani did not include other digital properties owned by Quint Digital Media, like as The Quint, Quintype Technologies, the News Minute and Youth Ki Awaaz.

Who owns BloombergQuint?

BloombergQuint was formed in 2016 as a joint venture between Quint Business Media and Bloomberg Media.

However, in March 2022, Bloomberg Media had announced their plan to exit the joint venture with Quintillion. According to the statements by Bloomberg Media, they would no longer co-produce content with Quint Business Media, but instead distribute its content in India through a licence agreement.

Quint Digital media shareholders

According to BSE, the shareholding pattern of Quint Digital Media clearly states that Raghav Bahl has 29.55%, and Ritu Kapur has 16.78% shareholding as promoters in the company. Further Mohan Lal Group is registered as another promoter group with 8.40% shareholding int he Quint Digital Media company.

RB Diversified Pvt Ltd is registered as another Promoter Group with 1.81% shareholding.

This accounts for 56.55% of Quint Digital Media's shareholding of the Promoter and Promoter Group.