Flipkart CEO takes a dig at Snapdeal

Sachin Bansal reacted to a news report, where Snapdeal co founder and COO Rohit Bansal has reportedly said that India doesn't have adequate quality programmers

Call it the Rahul Yadav effect! After the chief executive of Housing.com took on the heads of other e-commerce companies on social media, Flipkart co-founder and chief executive Sachin Bansal reacted on microblogging site Twitter to Snapdeal co-founder and chief operating officer Rohit Bansal’s statement in a news report.

Rohit Bansal had said India didn’t have adequate quality programmers. To this, Sachin tweeted, “Don’t blame India for your failure to hire great engineers. They join for culture and challenge.” Flipkart’s Bansal has been vocal on Twitter on a range of issues —from the company opting for Airtel Zero to Rahul Yadav’s public spat with Sequoia. But so far, there hasn’t been any open confrontation between Flipkart and Snapdeal.

According to a news report published in The Wall Street Journal, Rohit Bansal had said, “If you think about the landscape in India, not too many product companies were built here.” The company is scouting for programmers abroad. It is also considering starting a software development centre in the US and buying firms in that country to tap the engineering talent it needs.

“Many of these people moved to the US because opportunities for doing high-quality work were not available in India,” Rohit Bansal said. “Now, those opportunities are not only available in India, but (India) is a more exciting place,” the report quoted him as saying.

Many say Flipkart has also been hiring from the Silicon Valley for key managerial posts. Most e commerce companies, including Flipkart and Snapdeal, have been hiring techies in huge numbers, across levels.

Through tweets, Sachin Bansal clarified while one should quality engineers across the globe, he disagreed with the statement that India lacked good engineers.

Paytm’s Vijay Sekhar Sharma joined Sachin Bansal. “India has architects, engineers and all you need. People seek purpose and mission to give their life to,” Sharma said.

Of late, the Indian start-up ecosystem has been vocal about a plethora of issues, which traditional India Inc bosses might have only discussed in boardrooms. Recently, Rahul Yadav tweeted he was donating all his shares to employees. He had also urged fellow entrepreneurs — Ola’s Bhavish Aggarwal and Zomato’s Deepinder Goyal — to allot half their shares to employees.

Flipkart, India’s largest e-commerce company, has been facing competition from Snapdeal. Following reports saying Flipkart aimed to record $8 billion of gross merchandise value (GMV) by the end of this year, senior Snapdeal executives indicated their company was looking at a GMV of $9-10 billion.