A couple of weeks back, we saw nationwide outrage regarding Snapchat ever since Evan Spiegel allegedly made disparaging remarks about India, with #boycottsnapchat and #uninstallsnapchat trending on twitter and the rating of the app falling to one star on the Google Play Store.
While everyone was raging and raving about Snapchat and its media debacle, 23-year-old Tushar Khattar, an NSIT graduate (ECE Class of 2016) created what some are beginning to call India’s alternative to Snapchat, and that too within a mere 5 days. Modestly joking about being a one-man operation while the vision of birthing an Indian tech giant subtly pervaded his words, The Alliance caught up with the aspiring Entrepreneur about SnapUs, Snapchat and Evan Spiegel’s remarks about India. Hi Tushar. For someone who isn’t familiar with your work how would you introduce yourself? I am Tushar Khattar, a 2016 NSIT graduate. After graduating I worked in the startup world for a while. Now I am a full-time entrepreneur and had a couple of small projects I was working on. When the Snapchat controversy happened, I was shocked like everybody else, but being in the tech community and knowing that some of the premier talent in tech worldwide comes from India, the comments were especially odd and unexpected when we’ve seen countless other tech giants pursue India as a massive potential market. Be that as it may, it led me to the idea of making an app with similar functionalities as Snapchat that would be very cool but also very Indian. At that point, I locked myself in my room and coded for 5 days straight and the result is live on the Play Store right now and it’s called SnapUs. It has the basic functionality of Snapchat right now, but this is only the beginning. 
What’s next? As I said, it started off from what you may call a slightly negative impetus, but it very quickly turned into something I didn’t even know I wanted to make. The Indian identity in itself is a fascinating thing for me, and I hope SnapUs can play some role in the expression of that as a meaningful form of social interaction.I’m in talks with investors to turn this into more than just a one-man operation and start executing on this vision that started off tiny but has quickly turned very vast. The response so far has been more amazing than anything I could have expected and I’m excited about what comes next. You can check out the app here: Play store We wish Tushar all the best with his endeavours and hope to see SnapUs succeed at winning the hearts of many new users!