Sunanda was H1B recruiter
By Shalini Singh

On April 14, 2010, I had written the following article which lamented the fact that the Indian media were not doing their research and fact checking while reporting on Kochi IPL team sweat equity recipient Sunanda Pushkar.  The Indian media only had to logon to LinkedIn to see that Sunanda had a senior marketing role in Dubai.

Sunanda has just given her first ever in-depth interview to Indian media house Tehelka in which she gives her background and speaks about her friendship to Shashi Tharoor.  In this exclusive interview, Sunanda describes her days in USA running an IT HR firm which imported Indian techies on H1B Visas

“
In Canada, I had to start from scratch. I’d literally gone there with a suitcase and my child. But you know, Shoma, I have never taken my resume and looked for a job. I have always felt I can carve a niche for myself on my own terms. I’ve always been an entrepreneur that way. So for a while, I did many odds and ends. Then some friends in New York — two doctors who are still among my closest family friends — suggested I get into the IT sector which had just begun to boom. Everyone was looking for computer engineers from India, so we tied up with companies like Compaq and head-hunted in India for them.

After a while a friend in San Francisco alerted me that a company called Valley Resources wanted a partner. I told them I had no money to invest but they still wanted me. So, talk about sweat equity — (laughs) — that was my first sweat equity! It was a lot of fun and we did mighty well and made good money. I put Shivy in a private school; I bought ourselves a house; I got a BMW. And I did all this from the basement of my house. And through all that, I never used babysitters. I’m proud of bringing up my son by myself. Many of my friends across the world who knew me at that time are really disheartened and outraged by the way I am being portrayed in the media.
“

(Techgoss had published the following on April 14, 2010)

Tharoor link on LinkedIn
By Shalini Singh

While general social networking websites like Orkut and Facebook have the numbers in India, LinkedIn dominates the business and senior executive niche.  Many senior Indian executives can be found at LinkedIn networking and sharing their knowledge.

Reid Hoffman is the founder and CEO of LinkedIn with an excellent track record of investing in other startups like Digg, Flickr, Ning and Facebook. 

By now, every Indian newspaper, TV network, website and blog has covered the battle between two of India’s most high profile Twitterers – Minister Shashi Tharoor Versus IPL boss Mr. Lalit Modi.

While the true facts will only emerge in a few days, the trigger for the public spat was Mr. Modi twittering that Mr. Tharoor had warned him to back off from his friend and Kochi IPL investor Sunanda Pushkar. Modi claims that Tharoor asked him to not make public Sunanda’s involvement with the new IPL team.  Tharoor denies any such conversation with Modi.

It seems that the mainstream media had temporarily lost its judgment while covering the clash between high profile Twitterers Tharoor and Modi.  Somewhere along the line, the beautiful Sunanda became collateral damage.  Even one of my favourite TV channels CNN/IBN ran a report saying that Sunanda was a ‘beautician’ and ‘spa owner’.  The anchor even questioned how a beautician could get shares worth crores in an IPL team. Another national TV station described her as twice divorced which is a blatant falsehood.

It seems that not a single TV station or newspaper bothered to check LinkedIN.  If they did, they would have seen Sunanda Pushkar’s LinkedIN profile describing her as Sales Manager of UAE-based realtor TECOM.

After lying low for 24 hours, Sunanda Pushkar has finally released a statement to IANS “accusing the media of ignoring her professional background and international business experience and focussing obsessively on my personal life as if a woman cannot be capable of professional or financial success.”

Why are we journalists sometimes so obsessed with the sensational that we do not even bother to do a Google search for a LinkedIN profile?

(Samira, thanks for emailing in the story tip)