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ScoopWhoop Media is an Indian digital media company based in New Delhi. It operates various online content Vertical market and serves as a news organisation featuring web series, documentaries and current affairs reporting with a focus on video production and primarily catering to adolescents and young adults. It also features other infotainment and entertainment content.
The company was co-founded by Sattvik Mishra, Rishi Pratim Mukherjee, Sriparna Tikekar, Saransh Singh, Suparn Pandey and Debarshi Banerjee in 2013. Initially started as an Indian viral content generating and sharing website and described as a BuzzFeed clone, it has since expanded into a news media company competing with the likes of The Times Group, Dainik Jagran and NDTV on the digital platform.
The five co-founders were all alumni of the Indian Institute of Mass Communication of whom all except Sriparna Tikekar were employees of the designing and online marketing firm Dentsu Webchutney while she herself was an employee of the advertising firm McCann Erickson. The co-founders remained as employees of their respective firms while working on expanding ScoopWhoop as a side project. By January 2014, the WordPress hosted blog had been converted into a website and a viral content producing entertainment company. Debarshi Banerjee who is also credited as a co-founder was brought in for his technological expertise and became the Chief Technology Officer of the company.
In early 2014, the editor-in-chief of BuzzFeed, Ben Smith came into contact with the co-founders and offered them to work in partnership with BuzzFeed however the offer wasn't followed up by either party. Subsequently, Times Internet also offered to acquire ScoopWhoop but the offer was rejected by the co-founders of ScoopWhoop. Siddharth Rao, the CEO of Dentsu Webchutney eventually discovered the project and became one of the first investors along with the journalist Harsh Chawla, the first CEO of Network18 and the founder of Firstpost who was also an early investor of Dentsu Webchutney.
In November 2014, Bharti Softbank – the joint venture between Bharti Enterprises and SoftBank Group invested in the company and acquired 36.5% of its shareholding. The valuation of the company was estimated to be approximately at the time. According to The Caravan, the investment turned the co-founders of the company into overnight millionaires.
In February 2015, ScoopWhoop began its venture into news media and hired the journalist Anuja Jairan as the editor-in-chief who had previously been an employee of Reuters and Hindustan Times. Subsequently, in November 2015, the company again raised investments worth US$4 million from the venture capital firm Kalaari Capital to expand its editorial and video division. Since then it has entered into partnerships with Newslaundry and TikTok for the production of documentaries and distribution of their content respectively.
While initially the company had started as a producer of listicles and other viral content; according to the Columbia Journalism Review in late 2016, ScoopWhoop "had since moved into the broader terrain of news." It was identified as one of several independent and recently founded internet-based media platforms – a group that also included Scroll.in, Newslaundry, The News Minute, The Quint and The Wire – that were attempting to challenge the dominance of India's traditional print and television news companies and their online offshoots. The Business Standard described ScoopWhoop as an outlet that disseminates of news in non traditional formats around that time.
In March 2018 ScoopWhoop personnel were found to be involved in negotiations for a political campaign by investigative media portal Cobrapost.
In February 2022, a former ScoopWhoop employee, Samdish Bhatia accused the founder and CEO Sattvik Mishra and his wife of sexual harassment and assault, filing an FIR against him. Subsequently, the court refused to grant an interim injunction sought by Mishra in connection with this case.
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