Skeletons tumble out of the closet at ScoopWhoop

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Editor's note: This story starts in October 2021. The team at digital content company ScoopWhoop was quite pumped. The firm had finally landed a buyer and was prepping for its payday. It had been a long time coming.  Founded in 2013 by Sattvik Mishra, Rishi Pratim Mukherjee, Sriparna Tikekar, Debarshi Banerjee, Saransh Singh and Suparn Pandey—most of whom worked in advertising—ScoopWhoop was meant to be India’s answer to BuzzFeed. Easier said than done. For a while, ScoopWhoop made all the right noises, garnering big traffic numbers and raising funds from venture capital investors such as Kalaari Capital and AdvantEdge. But like many digital media companies, it struggled to generate revenue; after eight years, The Good Glamm Group, an online cosmetics retailer with a large content division, offered to well, scoop it up.  The transaction went through, an all-cash deal for ScoopWhoop, and was announced on 20 October last year. The very same day, Samdish Bhatia quit the company. Bhatia was one of the most popular online news anchors and the face of Unscripted, ScoopWhoop’s news and documentaries vertical (earlier a YouTube channel …