Taking a dig at each other on social media seems to be the norm for new-age entrepreneurs. A few days after Housing.com CEO Rahul Yadav took on founders of Zomato and Olacabs, it is Flipkart’s Sachin Bansal turn to take on rival Snapdeal on Twitter.
Bansal took to the micro-blogging site to criticise Rohit Bansal, co-founder and Chief Operating Officer, Snapdeal, for saying that there weren’t enough quality engineers in India. The Wall Street Journal has quoted Snapdeal’s Bansal as saying: “If you think about the landscape in India, not too many product companies got built here.”
In response Sachin Bansal wrote on Twitter, “Don't blame India for your failure to hire great engineers. They join for culture and challenge.”
Not taking things lying down, Rohit tweeted back, “Talking about culture, Snapdeal happened to be rated top 10 places to work in India, in case headline hunters missed this.” Earlier this month Housing CEO and founder of Zomato were taking pot shots at each other on social media. So are these entrepreneurs staging such online fights to be in the news?
Devangshu Dutta of consultancy firm ThirdEye Sight said social media was an integral part of this generation’s line of communication and expression. “May be the expression is blunt, quicker and gets amplified faster than it did in the past,” he said.
Image hit Harish Bijoor of Bijoor Consultants is of the view that brand image gets affected by such squabbles. “Squabbles reveal character. Going public with a fight is washing dirty linen in the public for ostensible private benefit. In reality, nobody gains.”
Last year, Snapdeal had taken a dig at Flipkart’s big billion sale after the mega online sale by the Bengaluru-based company flopped.