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TV18 exits India JV with Jobstreet.com
MUMBAI: As part of its strategy to exit from bad businesses, TV18 is selling its entire 50 per cent stake in Jobstreet.com India.
The joint venture made no progress and TV18 has taken a hit of Rs 25 million in the entire exercise, a source in the company says. The shares have been sold back to the partner, Jobstreet.com Singapore.
Floated in late 2006, the joint venture company was to tap into the rapidly growing job portal space in India and provide consolidated value to Web18, the internet and mobile arm of TV18. The market cap of Info Edge, the holding company of naukri.com, is Rs 25.09 billion. Though Info Edge has other smaller properties like www.jeevansathi.com, www.99acres.com, www.quadranglesearch.com and www.shiksha.com, it definitely provides an indicative valuation of a successful job portal in India.
“We are streamlining our businesses. This was one line of activity where we had no control over it and we were joint venture partners,” says the source.
Web18 had earlier conducted a major surgery at the time of economic downturn, getting rid of one-third of its workforce which had peaked to a strength of over 650 professionals.
Web18 had cobbled together a string of portals including Moneycontrol.com, In.com, Ibnlive.com and cricketnext.com. It had to shelve its plans of raising money through an ADR (American Depository Receipt) issue.
Web18 had posted a net loss of Rs 304.44 million on a revenue of Rs 499.11 million for the three quarters of the current fiscal. “We are going to be Ebitda positive in the fourth-quarter as we have controlled costs. We expect to operationally break even in the next fiscal,” the source says.
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Inshorts Group chief Deepit Purkayastha joins IAB video council for Southeast Asia and India
The co-founder and chief executive of the short-form content platform has been inducted into the IAB SEA+India Video Council, giving India a stronger voice in shaping digital video frameworks
NOIDA: India has long been the world’s most chaotic, multilingual and mobile-first digital market. Now, one of its most prominent short-video executives is getting a seat at the table where the rules are written.
Deepit Purkayastha, co-founder and chief executive of Inshorts Group, has been selected as a member of the IAB SEA+India Video Council for 2026. Run by the Interactive Advertising Bureau, the council brings together senior leaders from Southeast Asia and India to shape standards, best practices and measurement frameworks for the fast-evolving video and digital advertising ecosystem.
The timing is pointed. According to the IAMAI-Kantar Internet in India Report 2025, over 588 million Indians are now consuming short-video content, with growth increasingly driven by rural and non-metro audiences. India’s active internet user base has crossed 950 million, with 57 per cent of users now coming from rural markets. Yet the frameworks that govern how video consumption is measured and monetised were largely designed for single-language, Western markets and have struggled to keep pace with the scale, diversity and complexity of India’s digital landscape.
Purkayastha is no stranger to these debates. He already serves on the AI Council at Marketing and Media Alliance India and as co-chair of the Digital Entertainment Committee at the Internet and Mobile Association of India. His induction into the IAB SEA+India Video Council extends that influence into the global video standards arena.
Inshorts Group sits squarely at the intersection of these forces. Its flagship product, Inshorts, India’s highest-rated short news app, reaches 12 million active users with 60-word news summaries. Its sister platform, Public App, reaches 80 million monthly active users across more than 700 districts and 12 languages, serving communities that most global platforms barely register.
Purkayastha said the opportunity was about building something more representative. “India today sits at the centre of the global video ecosystem, but the frameworks that define how value is created and measured have not always kept pace with the realities of our market,” he said. “Being part of the IAB SEA+India Video Council is an opportunity to contribute to a more representative and future-ready approach, one that accounts for diversity in language, context, and user intent.”
As a council member, Purkayastha will contribute to shaping regional standards across video advertising, measurement and platform governance, with a focus on frameworks that are native to India’s multilingual, mobile-first ecosystem rather than imported from global benchmarks designed elsewhere.
For years, India has been content to play by rules written for other markets. Purkayastha’s induction is a signal that it is done waiting to be consulted and ready to start writing them.
