X user bullies Forbes 30 under 30 startup founders for their looks, netizens call out racism against Indians online

A viral tweet bullying two Indian origin startup founders who secured $61 million in funding for their voice-based artificial intelligence systems company Giga, has attracted ire from netizens on social media platform X (formerly Twitter).

The racist post by user @boneGPT on X, has till time of writing on November 8 received 34 lakh views and over 4,600 likes. It targeted San Francisco-based startup's founders Varun Vummadi and Esha Manideep for their looks.

Both Vummadi and Manideep are IIT Kharagpur graduates and featured on the Forbes 30 Under 30. But instead of focusing on the achievements, the troll post said, “if you raise $61M maybe hire attractive people for the demo.”

The user followed it up with a post added that Vummadi had blocked him and proceeded to double down on the bullying.

Netizens rise up in defense: ‘They’ll become millionaires… insecurity’

User bone's post attracted, in social media terms a “ratio”, where the views on the post, far exceed the likes, which implies that most readers disagreed with it or sought to ignore rather than engage with it.

One commentor said, “They have an attractive product, that's the only thing that matters. You are not using X because Elon musk is attractive, you are using X because it is an awesome product.”

Another fired back, “Watch them become millionaires while your groyper ass slaves away for a $12/h job”; and one user said, “When people can’t compete in brilliance, they attack appearance. That’s not humor that’s insecurity.”

Who are Varun Vummadi and Esha Manideep?

Varun Vummadi (CEO) and Esha Manideep (CTO) are co-founders of voice-based AI systems company Giga, which they recently announced has secured $61 million in funding. In the same announcement, the duo also said that their company has tied up with US food delivery platform DoorDash and will soon scale to other Fortune 100 companies.

Both Vummadi and Manideep are IIT Kharagpur alumni and have also featured on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list in 2024, as per a Financial Express report. It added that Vummadi turned down a $5,25,000 package as a quant trader, and Manideep refused a $1,50,00 role with a high frequency trading firm to instead pursue their startup dream.

Giga was founded in 2023 and in an interview with Y Combinator the duo described it as “building the next generation of customer support — real-time AI agents that can understand emotion, resolve issues instantly, and scale across the world’s largest enterprises.” It supports multiple languages and can be integrated into existing company systems.