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 raised $61 million in funding for voice-based AI systems company Giga drew the ire of netizens on social media platform X (formerly Twitter).
@boneGPT’s racist post on He targeted Varun Vummadi and Esha Manideep, founders of the San Francisco-based startup, for their appearance.
Both Vummadi and Manideep are IIT Kharagpur graduates and feature in the Forbes 30 Under 30 list. But instead of focusing on achievements, the troll post said, “If you raise $61 million, you can hire attractive people for the demo.”
The user followed up with a post stating that Vummadi blocked him and further escalated the bullying.
Netizens stood up in defense: ‘They will become millionaires… insecurity’
Userbone’s post attracted a “rate”, in social media terms, where views on the post far outnumbered likes; This means that most readers disagree with the post or try to ignore it rather than engage with it.
“They have an attractive product, that’s all that matters. You don’t use X because Elon musk is attractive, you use X because it’s a great product,” one reviewer said.
Another retorted, “Watch them become millionaires while your stupid ass slaves away for a $12 an hour job”; and one user said: “When people can’t compete on intelligence, they attack appearances. This isn’t humor, it’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, and they recently announced that the company has raised $61 million in funding. In the same announcement, the duo said 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 graduates of IIT Kharagpur and were featured in the Forbes 30 Under 30 list in 2024, as per the Financial Express report. He added that Vummadi turned down a $5,25,000 package as a quant trader and Manideep also turned down a $1,50,000 role in a high-frequency trading firm to pursue his startup dreams.
Giga was founded in 2023, and in an interview with Y Combinator, the duo described it as “building the next generation of customer support comprised of real-time AI agents that can understand emotions, solve problems instantly, and scale across the world’s largest enterprises.” It supports multiple languages and can be integrated into existing company systems.
