
India Is Too Poor, Snapchat Is for the Rich People – Evan Spiegel - pknerd
http://www.indiatimes.com/news/india/india-is-too-poor-this-app-is-for-the-rich-people-feels-snapchat-ceo-evan-spiegel-275707.html
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reacharavindh
Cultural attitudes and differences still exists in this globalized economy.
Premonitions like "Indians are poor" are the basis of western businesses
misjudging the markets in developing nations. Get out of your cocoon if you
want to develop your business internationally. US is not the world. It is true
that Indians(including myself) are value minded. You need a different business
model that caters to a higher volume than looking gor higher margins. But,
saying Indians and Spanish are poor so I won't focus on them is just naive.
You could instead say - "I don't want my business, in a low-margin market like
India because I don't know how to make money there." and that is
understandable.

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sortaThrowaway
Did you read the story?

This is an alleged comment made in a private mtg in 2015. When in private do
you make full statements with nuance every time you speak?

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reacharavindh
I did read the story, and the fact that he said it in 2015 doesn't matter to
what I opined. I'm not crying out loud that someone said something bad about
the country I was born in. I'm just sharing my opinion in a forum of hackers
(who could end up running businesses in India) that businesses work
differently in India, and that a CEO of a billion $ startup would be just
naive to not realize that and word his views accordingly.

If I say something that misses the point entirely, I expect my friends to just
tell me, I'm wrong, and also tell me why. That's what I intended to do. Albeit
publicly.

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andriesm
What proof is there that he actually said this, and what were his exact words?

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albertini_89
India it is very poor. What Evan said was India was'nt an appropiate market to
invest in. India is poor, that is a fact. You shouldn't be offended by the
true. Everywhere you find richs and poors, but yeah, India is a poor country,
deal with that!

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slad
May be he forgot to check this -
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_the_num...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_the_number_of_billionaires)

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sortaThrowaway
How does having billionaires mean there is a large population that you can
monetize?

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thr0waway1239
Hey you just gave me an idea. An exclusive photo sharing app for people who
are worth a billion dollars or more. I mean, how will those poor people show
off their private mansions without attracting unnecessary scrutiny? Since the
service has no need to scale, I will personally visit every billionaire to
verify their identity when they join. And then I will start a bidding war
amongst all the luxury goods makers to advertise on my network.

All I need to do now is to befriend a few billionaires.

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Oletros
> “I don’t want to expand into poor countries like India and Spain.”

Spain is a poor country?

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throwaway049
I was prompted by your question to search around, and I saw this site which
puts two sets of country economic data side by side [0]

[0][https://country-
facts.findthedata.com/compare/122-131/India-...](https://country-
facts.findthedata.com/compare/122-131/India-vs-Spain)

~~~
praneshp
Decent website, but pretty sure it's not 100% polished yet. One (of several)
things that threw me off was the "Female Survival Rate to Age 65" comparison.
I was shocked to see that India is only at 3.7%, and the color filling in the
picture also makes it seem so. It is actually 73.7% and the 7 is hiding in the
picture.

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aviraldg
Indian here, I'll cross post from Facebook.

"Why Netflix? Torrent karle." "Steam? Tu rich hoga bro." "Tu apps ke liye pay
karta hai? WTF!" (don't think I need to translate)

... and we get offended when Evan Spiegel points out the (bitter) truth.

~~~
kranner
Translations which parent should have offered:

"Why Netflix? Torrent karle." Why Netflix? Torrent it.

"Steam? Tu rich hoga bro." Steam? You must be rich, bro.

"Tu apps ke liye pay karta hai? WTF!" You pay for apps? WTF!

