Kudos Indians ! We finally forced Snapdeal — one of India’s poster boy companies when it comes to our startup ecosytem to issue a statement on something — which literally had nothing to do with either Snapdeal or its business or anything even closely related to the company.
A few of our lot showed why India continues to be viewed by the rest of the world — as a country of chaos, when we deliberately downrated Snapdeal’s app rating by giving it 1 stars on all the app stores it currently resides on. And while a logical reason would have been a failed app, or a huge security bug or something like that, it was Aamir Khan’s (Snapdeal’s brand ambassador) political statements on the ongoing intolerance debate which triggered this illogical, ridiculous (I can’t really express my actual feelings here) move of downgrading the app ratings.
Well to calm things a bit, Snapdeal has come out with an official statement, categorically stating how Aamir Khan’s personal views have nothing to do with the company. The company writes,
Snapdeal is neither connected nor plays a role in comments made by Aamir Khan in his personal capacity. Snapdeal is a proud Indian company built by passionate young Indians focused on building an inclusive digital India. Everyday we are positively impacting thousands of small businesses and millions of consumers in India. We will continue towards our mission of creating one million successful online entrepreneurs in India.
While the statement got out, rival Flipkart’s CEO Sachin Bansal came in full support of Snapdeal, and slammed people for relating a brand ambassador’s personal opinions to that of the brand.
This is a flawed logic. Brands don't buy into brand ambassadors personal opinions. @snapdeal shouldn't face this https://t.co/Y1sPvnXQgs
— Sachin Bansal (@_sachinbansal) November 25, 2015
The controversy actually erupted when Aamir Khan made a statement on ‘Intolerant India’ at the Ramnath Goenka awards function on Monday, with someone triggering an #AppWaapsi hashtag to compel people to downgrade Snapdeal’s app ratings.
Hoping things would settle down now and those downgraders would get some sense in there !
