AskMe does not have the money to pay its employees their salaries for July, Manav Sethi, Group CMO & head of digital strategy at AskMe Group, told MediaNama. The company is waiting for money to come in from Malaysian media and telecom company Astro, which, according to AskMe, was supposed to be paid by 31 July. He added that the company had money to pay 200-300 people, but refused to state the exact amount AskMe had left for survival. In June, AskMe made a management buyout (MBO) proposal to Astro to buy back the stake Astro held in the company. AskeMe’s parent company is Getit Infomedia, which Astro had acquired 50% stake in 2010 for around $20 million. “No, so we may have but at the end of the day, there is a money that has to come from Astro, that gets apportioned to salaries, payables, any other head.. is completely incumbent upon the business (buyout), but at the end of the day, employees because they're the ones on the receiving end.. I mean I have to pay their .. components, bonuses, so salary is only one small part of it,” Sethi added. MediaNama contacted Sethi after unnamed employees at the AskMe Group wrote an open letter to Ananda Krishnan of the Malaysian Astro Holdings company asking him to ‘pay all outstanding dues of AskMe’s employees till end of July 2016’. The letter stated that salaries and dues of more than 4,000 families (not sure if all are employees) are at risk and that the…
