Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel probably got his first lesson in humility recently. In his quest to grow faster, he made a comment (probably in arrogance) about India (called it a poor country). He probably didn’t anticipate the scale of the backlash that he would face for his comments.
- Evan Spiegel is a college dropout and became the world’s youngest billionaire after his application Snapchat became a hit among the younger crowd (due to its unique feature where messages vanish after viewing).
- Snapchat CEO Evan Speigel had called India, “A Poor Country” to expand.
- Spiegel had a privileged childhood and loves the good life. Evan Spiegel is engaged to Miranda Kerr, a bikini model who first made her name on the catwalk for Victoria’s Secret.
- When his parents were going through the divorce proceedings, a then 17-year-old Spiegel had argued for the need for an allowance of about $2,000 monthly to support his lifestyle. He even played his parents against one another to get a new BMW car, according to court paperwork.
- “Life isn’t fair.. It’s not about working hard. It’s about working the system.”
- He boasted of his family connections in order to attend Stanford classes with Silicon Valley stars, and to get a job at software company Intuit.
Not only has Evan antagonized over a billion Indian people (hashtags like #Uninstall_Snapchat, #BoycottSnapchat started trending on twitter), reportedly Indian Hackers released 1.7 Million Snapchat users data which is now available on Darknet (because of his India comments).
Unfortunately, online shopping site Snapdeal got caused in the cross-fire, with several Indians uninstalling Snapdeal app (as they mistook Snapdeal for Snapchat).
Earlier too, Snapdeal found itself caught in the controversy, after Aamir Khan’s ‘intolerance’ remark made several Indians unhappy (Aamir was the brand ambassador of Snapdeal then).
