Snap, Snap, Snap… Chat

Birender Singh

Birender Singh

Just few days back. Snapchat underwent a rough phase in India after its CEO Evan Spiegel’s ‘Poor Country’ comments didn’t go down well with its Indian community.

Following which, the platform was uninstalled by many and the campaign #boycott Snapchat started trending on social media platforms. Snapchat lost from its about four million user base and as per media reports, “the Snapchat application ratings were down to one star on the Apple App Store”.

Spiegel’s comment was in a bad taste, but the fact is he should know that India today compete with its global peers. We must be having about 22% of population below the poverty line, but we are growing with a GDP of around 7.5%.

According to Global Finance Magazine, in a list of poor countries, India ranks 64th and is far behind countries like Vietnam, Myanmar, Pakistan, Nigeria among others.

Uber also faced a smiliar situation when, Christian Freese, General Manager at Uber’s Bangalore office, commented that “folks (Indians) were rather locked up at home” before the company launched its operations and that people were now going out…

Both Uber and Snapchat have drawn flak from the Indian community and the Twitterati have made the companies bite the dust.

Having said that, Indians have large hearts and for gaining people’s trust again the companies should look at offering some good schemes for the Indian community. It would be mere bygones, if these companies really impress the Indians with their offerings.

But yes, whenever commenting please think twice as it’s never wise to use adjectives while commentingJ