VentureWoods

Finally we were able to come out and share our perspectives on our investment in Naaptol. Over past few weeks, as the news leaked first in ET, then picked by various blogs; and then a second round in VCCircle, we received several enquiries on the same. I would like to thank media persons who resorted to responsible journalistic practices, and allowed us an opportunity to express our views on the same.

Some of the earlier misreports, perhaps especially the one at pluggd.in drew stark reactions from people questioning whether this was responsible journalism. Honestly, I do not feel anger that “our news had been leaked” – media in general has leaned in favor of sensationalism over past many years, and there is no reason to expect that online blogging will be any different. There will be certain sources that will lose credibility over time, and there will be others which will be relied upon for authenticity – that strategy choice belongs to owners of those sources. As an audience, the choice that belongs to us is who we go to and for what. In the print and television media, business success has not necessarily been maximized by credibility, but by “breaking news”, and I consider it a valid incentive in the startup space as well. The mistake that we have made and feel undone for, is to consider startup bloggers as “friends of startups” – that mistake is entirely ours. These businesses have no obligation to care about interests of entrepreneurs, which can be severely damaged if deals “reported” in media do not go through. These are businesses like any other, and are free to set their ethical standards where they would like to – if we dont like that as customers of these businesses, we should defect.

There is one primary reason for me to write this post though. At pluggd.in, there were several revisions of the story, and I think most of them misquoted me, including the last one of my having denied the investment altogether. I consider this as deliberate falsification of information on part of the author – my credibility is important for me, and I am reproducing my response to Ashish in toto – as the readers will notice, I had refrained from denying or confirming specifically the news of an investment being made. There was also no express refutation of the numbers reported by ET – I can now confirm that the numbers reported by ET were wrong.

Nothing to share right now Ashish. The ET report is factually incorrect – journalistic over reach!

Will definitely share anything that we have to share with you

Alok Mittal

which got reported as “[Alok] mentioned that the numbers aren’t correct at all”, and the followup

As I said, no issues from my end, cheers

Its not just the data, the news itself might be incorrect

which got reported as a denial of the investment – “It seems the news itself isnt correct, as per my conversation with Alok”.

I am perfectly fine with any journalist reporting standards. One thing that does apply even to that world – Please do not misquote.