This is Sachin Bansal. He's the co-founder of Flipkart, India's largest startup that's registered in, um, Singapore, and gets most of its funding from abroad.
This is Bhavish Aggarwal, CEO of Ola, Uber's largest Indian competitor that gets most of its funding from abroad too.
Aggarwal and Bansal recently spoke at a conference organised by Carnegie India and let's just say that what they said did not go down too well with India's tech and startup community.
.@_sachinbansal of @Flipkart: What we need to do is tell the world we need your capital, but not your companies.… https://t.co/4CBTdfTBuB
"What we need to do is what China did (15 years ago) and tell the world we need your capital, but we don't need your companies,” said Bansal as reported by the Economic Times.
Aggarwal called out foreign companies like Uber and Amazon and said that the fact that they had pot-loads of money to pour in to India made it an "unfair playing field for Indian startups."
Naturally, India's tech and business Twitter let them have it.
serious question: is Flipkart an Indian company?
This is a rising but ugly tech trend: Indian companies (financed by foreign cash) trying to get Indian subs of fore… https://t.co/gFPa1M6puW
Find this protectionist clamour amusing! When you're a photocopy of foreign models & largely have foreign capital.… https://t.co/SX9HJYDKHg
Even industrial India, most hit by liberalisation, does not whine for protection the way e-commerce companies are: https://t.co/VvCn46MPpK
@CarnegieIndia @_sachinbansal @Flipkart @bhash Or maybe "send me your gifts, don't come to my wedding"?
And some non-tech folks were pissed off too.
Yes government. Please protect our unrealistically valued, inefficient businesses that we built off the backs of un… https://t.co/VWuLfGQ962
Flipkart & Ola - children of post-liberalization, who laughed at Taxi-drivers & retailers crying for protection https://t.co/lJnOw5YoqM
When Autowallah and retailers do it, they scream open markets. And now? Can't have your cake and eat it too.… https://t.co/iYAVsFdF1Z
Bansal later attempted to explain his comments in a tweet...
Yesterday at Carnegie Tech Summit, commented that India is a co-creation partner and not only a market to be captured by capital
...to which this one response accurately summed up what we all thought after reading it.
