Two IIT Kharagpur graduates and Forbes 30 Under 30 alumni were subjected to racist trolling shortly after they revealed that their San Francisco-based startup, Giga, had secured $61 million in funding.
Varun Vummadi and Esha Manideep released a video on X announcing that their voice AI technology had already begun working with DoorDash and was preparing to scale across Fortune 100 companies.
Instead of focusing on the product, several users targeted the founders over their appearance, accent, and the nature of their work.
One user wrote, “If you raise $61M maybe hire attractive people for the demo.”
The same user, in a subsequent post, said that Varun had blocked him on X and proceeded to post further comments comparing his old photographs with current images.
Soon, there were people who came to the defence of start-up founders.
One user responded, “When people can't compete in brilliance, they attack appearance. That's not humour that's insecurity.”
Another user pointed out that attacking the founders would not change their success, writing that people should “watch them become millionaires,” while those focused on trolling would still be slaving away for a “$12/h job.”
Support continued to pour in. “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,” one person wrote.
About Giga
Giga develops voice-based AI systems that can manage real-time conversations for large enterprises. Founded in 2023, Giga builds AI that can speak and chat at the same time, handle multiple languages and integrate with large enterprises' systems.
Varun earlier shared on LinkedIn that both founders chose their startup over well-paying opportunities. Esha was offered a $150,000 position at an Indian HFT firm, while Varun turned down a Stanford PhD offer along with a $525,000 quant trader role.
