Mumbai: While Indians are increasingly downloading Snapchat on their smartphones, the company’s CEO feels India is “too poor” to seriously consider expanding its user base.
According to a report by Variety , the disparaging comment was made by the CEO of Snapchat, Evan Spiegel, allegedly during a meeting to discuss the growth of the app’s user base in 2015.
When an employee raised concern about the app’s slow growth in a market like India which has a growing mobile penetration, Spiegel cut the employee mid-sentence saying, “This app is only for rich people,” Spiegel said, Variety quoted the employee’s revelation. “I don’t want to expand into poor countries like India and Spain.”
India is a rapidly growing market with Internet penetration expected to grow 2.5 times by 2020, with mobile leading the race. It is these numbers which are driving tech giants like Amazon and Uber and investors like Masayoshi Son and Jack Ma to invest billions of dollars in the country.
The employee Anthony Pompliano, who is currently engaged in a lawsuit against Snapchat after he accused the company of misleading investors by providing inflated statistics about user data, said Spiegel stormed out of the meeting after making this comment.
According to unverified reports, Snapchat had close to 4 million users in India last year. While though the exact user base is not available, this number is expected to have grown since then. In comparison, Whatsapp has close to 200 million users in India.
The comment is part of the allegations made public on April 10, according to Variety, after Snapchat gave up on its efforts to keep the complaint redacted. Variety reports Pompliano , who was hired from Facebook to increase the company’s user base, was fired by Snapchat later. Read More.
