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Apparently, The Snapchat CEO Said He Doesn't Want To Expand In 'Poor Countries Like Spain And India'

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Mike Blake / Reuters

While the technology companies of the world are trying to woo Indian consumers, the CEO of Snapchat feels India is 'too poor' for anything worthwhile.

As reported by Variety, 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.

Pompliano has sued the company for misleading investors by providing inflated statics about user data. He alleges that in summer of 2015 when Snapchat had around 95 million active users the company showed the numbers of daily 100 million active users.

"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.

He was hired by the company to grow the user base. When he saw the numbers he was worried as the growth was only 1 to 4% in past few quarters. Pompliano was later fired by the startup citing 'Poor performance' reasons.

Recently, Instagram stories surpassed Snapchat in terms of the number of daily users. Instagram had introduced the feature in August 2016. Snapchat's parent company Snap Inc. also filed for an IPO earlier this year.

HuffPost India has reached out to Snapchat for a comment.

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This article exists as part of the online archive for HuffPost India, which closed in 2020. Some features are no longer enabled. If you have questions or concerns about this article, please contact indiasupport@huffpost.com.