Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel's comments on India sparks row, company rubbishes ex-employee's allegations

While Snapchat is a trending social media platform among Indians, Evan Spiegel, CEO of Snapchat feels India is 'too poor' to consider expansion of its user base.

According to the reports, an ex-employee of Snapchat, Anthony Pompliano, said that during a user growth meeting in 2015, Evan Spiegel put emphasis on acquiring only premium users.

"This app is only for rich people. I don't want to expand into poor countries like India and Spain," CEO Spiegel had said, according to the ex-employee.

Snapchat - the video based social media platform - owned by parent company Snap Inc., responded to the report saying, "This is ridiculous. Obviously Snap is for everyone! It's available worldwide to download for free."

Read more: Module selling bank, credit card details and Facebook, WhatsApp data of 1 cr people busted in Delhi

The ex-employee is currently engaged in a lawsuit against Snapchat after he accused the company of presenting misleading inflated statistics of user data to its investors.

According to the lawsuit, Pompliano worked at the firm for three weeks before he was fired for uncovering ‘massive internal systematic failure’ and reporting it to seniors. Snapchat’s legal team called Pompliano a “disgruntled employee fired for poor performance”.

"Mr. Spiegel was inexplicably enraged throughout the meeting and refused to listen to anything Mr. Pompliano said, constantly cutting him off and summarily dismissing his points", the lawsuit says.

Read more: Qualcomm claims Apple made threats, lied to regulators to cover up inferior parts usage in smartphones

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 that are driving tech giants like Amazon and Uber and investors like Masayoshi Son and Jack Ma to invest billions of dollars in the country.