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Indian web entrepreneurs make millions, SlideShare goes to LinkedIn
MUMBAI: Indian entrepreneurs are harvesting the Internet boom, selling their ventures to major players. The latest to cash in are Rashmi Sinha and her brother Amit Ranjan.
The professional networking site LinkedIn has agreed to acquire SlideShare, a leading professional content sharing community, for approximately $118.75 million, or Rs 6.40 billion.
The brainchild of the website and co-founder was Sinha‘s husband Jonathan Boutelle who is based in the San Francisco. Sinha, a PhD in cognitive cognitive neuropsychology from Brown University in the US, is the CEO of SlideShare. Ranjan, an alumnus of Delhi‘s Faculty of Management Studies, is in charge of the India office.
The transaction will be carried out in 45 per cent cash and 55 per cent stock deal. The company said that the acquisition is expected to close during the second quarter of 2012.
Founded in October 2006, SlideShare helps professionals discover people through content, and content through people. SlideShare users have uploaded more than nine million presentations, and according to comScore, in March SlideShare had nearly 29 million unique visitors.
SlideShare is also enabling the sharing of presentations across the Web; nearly 7.4 million presentations hosted by SlideShare are embedded across more than 1.4 million unique domains.
“Presentations are one of the main ways in which professionals capture and share their experiences and knowledge, which in turn helps shape their professional identity,” said LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner. “These presentations also enable professionals to discover new connections and gain the insights they need to become more productive and successful in their careers, aligning perfectly with LinkedIn’s mission and helping us deliver even more value for our members. We’re very excited to welcome the SlideShare team to LinkedIn.”
SlideShare CEO Rashmi Sinha commented, “We built SlideShare to help professionals share presentations and connect people through content. What we can build with LinkedIn, the largest professional network on the Internet, is the most natural extension of this vision. I am excited about what we can build together.”
There is a rich list of Indian entrepreneurs who made millions of dollars by selling their firms to dotcom giants. Recently, Facebook acquired Indian entrepreneur Abheek Anand‘s start-up Tagtile, in a cash and stock deal. Last year, Walmart bought Kosmix, a data analytics company floated by Venky Harinarayan and Anand Rajaraman, for around $300 million. In the past, they had sold comparison-shopping site Junglee to Amazon for $250 million. And let‘s not forget Sabeer Bhatia, the man who started it all. His free Web-based email service Hotmail was snapped up by Microsoft Corp.
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With 57 per cent single new users, Ashley Madison rebrands as discreet dating platform
Platform says majority of new members now identify as single
INDIA: Ashley Madison is shedding the “married-dating” label that defined it for two decades, repositioning itself as a platform for discreet dating in what it calls the post-social media age.
The rebrand, unveiled in India on 27 February, 2026, marks a structural shift in business model and identity. Once synonymous with married dating, the company now describes itself as the “premier destination for discreet dating” under a new tagline: Where Desire Meets Discretion.
The pivot is data-driven. Internal figures show that 57 per cent of global sign-ups between 1 January and 31 December, 2025 identified as single: a notable departure from the platform’s married core. The company argues that its community has already evolved beyond its original positioning.
“In an age where our lives have been constantly put on public display, privacy has become the new luxury,” said Ashley Madison chief strategy officer Paul Keable. He framed the platform’s offering as “ethical discretion” for singles, separated, divorced and non-monogamous users seeking private connections.
The shift also taps into wider digital fatigue. A global survey conducted by YouGov for Ashley Madison, covering 13,071 adults across Australia, Brazil, Canada, Germany, India, Italy, Mexico, Spain, Switzerland, the UK and the US, found mounting discomfort with hyper-public online lives.
Among dating app users, 30 per cent cited constant swiping and messaging as a source of fatigue, while 24 per cent pointed to pressure to curate public-facing profiles and early personal disclosure. Some 27 per cent said fears of screenshots or information being shared contributed to exhaustion; an equal share cited unwanted attention.
The retreat from oversharing appears broader. According to the survey, 46 per cent of adults actively try to keep most aspects of their life private online. Only 8 per cent feel comfortable sharing most aspects publicly, while 35 per cent say they are becoming more selective about what they disclose.
Ashley Madison is betting that this cultural recalibration towards controlled visibility can be monetised. By doubling down on privacy infrastructure and reframing itself around discretion rather than infidelity, the company is attempting to convert reputational baggage into a premium proposition.
