Evan Spiegal, the chief executive officer of Snap Inc., the parent company of ephemeral social media platform Snapchat, has found himself in the eye of a storm and at the receiving end of Indian Twitterati's ire after reportedly saying Snapchat was not for 'poor countries like India'.

The 26-year-old Spiegal's unverified comments were published this week in a Variety report about a lawsuit that an ex-employee filed against Snapchat in the United States.

Anthony Pompliano, the former Snapchat employee, claims in his lawsuit that Spiegal once said, "This app is only for rich people...I don't want to expand into poor countries like India and Spain."

Never the ones to let a young billionaire from the West disparage the country, Indians back home took to Twitter to slam, ridicule and troll Spiegal, causing #snapchat, #boycottsnapchat and #uninstallsnapchat to trend on the social media platform on Saturday.

On Sunday, Snapchat appeared to have responded to the claim. The Hindustan Times quoted the company as saying, "This is ridiculous. Obviously Snapchat is for everyone! It's available worldwide to download for free."

THE LAWSUIT

Anthony Pompliano's lawsuit deals with Snap Inc. allegedly using inaccurate means to calculate metrics like daily active users (DAU) and user retention.

Pompliano stops short of accusing Snap Inc's senior leadership of deliberately inflating user metrics but says that higher-ups at the company were "completely misinformed" about important metrics.

Pompliano contends that during his three-week stint at the company, he discovered "a wide-spread, systemic failure in Snapchat's internal controls over its user data".

In his lawsuit, Pompliano claims to have uncovered evidence that the tools used by Snapchat were leading to the company claiming higher-than-actual numbers for metrics such as daily active users, month-over-month user growth and user retention.

Alarmed that advertisers were being misled by inflated numbers, Pompliano claims to have approached senior management with his concerns, but says was dismissed by them.

In 2015, the lawsuit says, Pompliano prepared a PowerPoint presentation for CEO Evan Spiegal.

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'INDIA TOO POOR FOR US'

It was during the September 11, 2015 presentation when Spiegal allegedly made the comments that have so irked Indians on Twitter.

After going through the presentation on Pompliano's findings, Spiegal is said to have commented, "Yeah I read those, it doesn't matter."

Pompliano says he then brought up Snapchat's poor showing in Spain and India, both countries with high mobile penetration.

Responding to this, Spiegal allegedly said he was not interested in expanding "into poor countries like India and Spain", before storming out of the meeting.

A few days later, Pompliano says Snapchat fired him. He also alleges that Snap Inc. executives made disparaging comments about him to prospective employers.

Snap Inc. has labelled Pompliano a "disgruntled employee fired for poor performance" and who filed the lawsuit for publicity.

"The simple fact is that he knows exactly nothing about Snap's current metrics...He and his lawyers are - not to put too fine a point on matters - just making things up," the company's attorneys have said.

TWITTER RAGES

Once the Variety report came to light, #Snapchat became a trending topic on Twitter in India. Users initially slammed and trolled Spiegal for his alleged comments.

Soon after #uninstallsnapchat and #boycottsnapchat started to trend as people started extolling others to stop using the app.

Here are a few choice reactions:

#Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel Calls India poor Now if u r indian.1. Uninstall snapchat 2. Rate it 1 star on play store3. RT#boycottsnapchat - Viner Aniket (@viner_aniket) April 15, 2017

Snapchat CEO called India a poor country. Now a Indian should work hard, become rich, buy Snapchat, and marry his daughter Bollywood style - Pakchikpak Raja Babu (@HaramiParindey) April 15, 2017

Snapchat CEO's net worth is USD 4 Billion and Mukesh ambani's USD 30 Billion. He can purchase #snapchat 7 times lol.??bas itne hi poor hai ?? - akhilkoul143 (@akhilkoul143) April 15, 2017

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