Tehelka’s biz paper venture has been aborted.

Exchange4Media reports that Financial World, Tehelka’s biz paper venture has been aborted. The decision has been taken because of a funding crunch and many of the senior editors who joined the project has already left the group.

Those who have reportedly left the project according to the report include Executive Editor Prem Shankar Jha, Business Editor Shantanu Guha Ray, Political Editor MK Shukla, Foreign Editor Shastri Ramchandran, and Science Editor Prakash Chandra, among others.

According to a Medianewsline report K.D. Singh of Alchemist group who is a majority stakeholder in Anant Media and owns Financial World title has withdrawn from the biz paper project.

Here’s the letter that’s going around the web and reportedly sent to colleagues by Hardev Sanotra, Managing Editor, Financial World.

Hi. It’s bad news for all of us.

Tarun Tejpal this afternoon addressed the staff in Delhi and in essence said that the FW project was off. He said that efforts were made to make it possible to keep the project going but it was not possible. There were mistakes made in senior hiring, and the planning part of it and it was with deep regret that he was taking the decision not to go ahead with it. He said he would ask everyone to start looking for a job, but that the company would give salaries till end of February if someone does not find a job earlier.

It’s a sad development since we were till recently all charged up to bring out the paper.

The immediate fallout is that we will not be covering news anymore and there would be no updates for the web. You need not come to the office. The salary for Jan will be paid as usual on Feb 7 and the rest of the settlement will be done in first week of March.

There will be a few from the team which Tarun is making effort to absorb in Magazine or Web, but the number may be small.

Some of the staffers here in Delhi have requested Tarun if March salary can be paid too. He said people should try and find jobs, and if some of you are unable to do so even till March, “we will do our best.”

At some stage I will talk to you, individually.

Regards
Hardev Sanotra

What caught our attention is the name of journalists who joined this venture.