5 highlights
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It now emerges that Bhatia left after a sexual harassment episode, where he was the victim and Mishra, CEO and co-founder, was the perpetrator. Internally, along with his resignation letter, Bhatia had filed a sexual harassment complaint against Mishra, alleging “unwanted, unsolicited, and uncalled sexual advances and sexually predatory behaviour of criminal and civil consequences”.
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Since foreign investment in Indian news media companies is limited to 26% and requires government approval, Unscripted couldn’t be part of the acquisition by The Good Glamm Group. So, the co-founders of ScoopWhoop planned to carve Unscripted out into a new entity.
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The second version of the incident comes from WhoopScoop, the entity created in October last year to house Unscripted and the one that has now filed the suit against Mishra and Bhatia.
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this is not the first time that the ScoopWhoop founders have had to fight such allegations. In 2017, a former employee had filed a police complaint against co-founder Suparn Pandey alleging sexual harassment.
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It will be tough for ScoopWhoop to justify its actions again. It’s clear that the company was desperate for an acquisition, given its financials (see chart below), and it considered that not disclosing the details of this incident was in the company’s best interest.