The digital business of Raghav Bahl and Ritu Kapur's The Quint have been acquired by Gaurav Mercantiles Limited, a company that also has Kapur and Bahl as its promoter group. Gaurav Mercantiles was in the business of "import and trading of almonds and other products". Effectively, Kapur and Bahl are listing The Quint via its acquisition by a publicly listed company which they themselves acquired a majority stake in, over the past year or so. It's likely that The Quint isn't a profitable company, and thus listing it would have been difficult. Things have been pretty difficult for Bahl and co too: Layoffs and furlough at The Quint: The Quint told 45 employees to go on leave without pay, following the recession given the COVID19 crisis. Some employees were paid for all of April, and others were given half the month’s pay, according to Newslaundry. The company has also reportedly waived its non-compete clause with employees, and cancelled its subscriptions to news wire services. BloombergQuint, a joint venture between US media company Bloomberg and Quintillion Media has had to abandon its ambitions to run a TV channel, and switch to running its online subscription product BQ Blue. Moneycontrol had reported in December that the TV channel was on the verge of falling through, and that Bloomberg was looking at other media companies to partner with. BloombergQuint had sought to broadcast on TV as far back as 2016, but in 2018 the Ministry of Information & Broadcasting declined their application, citing security…
