Indians are crazy about snapchat and despite this fact CEO of the company , Evan Spiegel feels that India is too poor to consider expansion.
According to a report by American website variety , snapchat CEO said that he was not interested in expanding business in poor countries like India. ‘This app is only for rich people , Spiegel said during a meeting in 2015, a former employee alleges.
The incident happened in 2015. In a meeting to discuss the growth of app’s user base , an ex-employee Anthony Pompliano was presenting new ideas to drive growth from developing countries and he was allegedly cut off by Spiegel who stated that the app was for rich people and that he didn’t want to expand in poor countries like India. Pompliano is currently engaged in a lawsuit against snapchat. He accused the company for misreporting key numbers such as daily active users and user growth.¬† Snapchat was inflating it’s registration completion rate, which it claimed was about 87%. In fact, Pompliano says it was less than 40%. The company was also claiming to retain 40% of it’s users after seven days , when in fact the figure was closer to 20% the employee claims. Pampliano, who was hired from facebook to increase the user base of snapchat was fired within 3 weeks of joining.
The astonishing fact is that, this statement was made at a time when most International Tech Companies like Google, Facebook, Microsoft etc. were looking to get a pie of Indian Markets and generate new revenue from India.
However these comments by Snapchat CEO can have a negative impact on Indian users.Most of them have started reacting in an aggressive manner , while some even threatened to quit social media.
