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From Bengaluru traffic to Modi govt’s diplomacy, Hotmail founder Sabeer Bhatia is ruffling feathers

What began as a series of acid-laced questions about India’s GDP growth on record, soon escalated into an all-out punditry marathon.

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New Delhi: Indian-American entrepreneur Sabeer Bhatia, better known as the founder of Hotmail, isn’t someone afraid to speak their mind.

What began as a series of acid-laced questions about India’s GDP growth on record, soon escalated into an all-out punditry marathon: rants against Operation Sindoor, bemoaning lack of access to quality education, and even attacking the Narendra Modi-led central government’s policy priorities.

Bhatia’s latest was a dig at the Prime Minister’s tours and civilian honours conferred on him by various heads of states over the past decade.

Having stayed out of the public eye these past few years, except for the occasional press interview and paid speaking tour, Bhatia made a comeback with hot takes on everything from policy to economy, and how. His opening salvo was a direct X post questioning the significance of India becoming the world’s fourth-largest economy when millions of citizens can barely afford to put food on the table. The post went viral, with thousands reposting the phrase, “Can you feel it in your pocket?”

Within days, Bhatia was also writing posts about a bottom-up initiative in BJP-governed states to encourage entrepreneurship among rural women, wondering if it was more performative politics than empowerment.

Some social media users hailed him as the new “people’s megaphone” while others, particularly government-aligned pundits, brushed him aside as a “self-appointed saviour”.

But the momentum gained steam: By mid-May, Bhatia’s follower count on X had risen from under 50,000 to more than 200,000.

Returning to India in the early 2000s after selling Hotmail, he was eager to spearhead a technology revolution. He invested in Simpa Networks—a solar-energy company set to provide pay-as-you-go power to rural villages.

Bhatia’s next venture—a 200-acre “Nano City” in Haryana’s Panchkula—aimed to replicate Silicon Valley’s knowledge hub. But critics flagged it for opaque land deals and unrealistic timelines. In 2019, the state government formally scrapped the project, citing unmet conditions.

He launched two additional ventures: a mobile-first e-learning platform, EduSpark, and a blockchain-based supply chain company, Transcircle.

ThePrint looks at some of his hot takes that have ruffled feathers on X.


Also read: Viksit Bharat goal needs more than GDP growth. Shift policy from entitlement to empowerment


Sabeer Bhatia’s hot takes

The first had to be Bhatia’s breakthrough tweet questioning India’s GDP data. Posted on 28 May, it followed chatter over how India is on track to surpass Japan to become the fourth largest economy in nominal terms.

Bhatia shared a video showing quality of life in India, captioned: “Growth without distribution is just inflation in disguise.”

Just 2 days ago, on 9 July, Bhatia cited Pakistan assuming rotational presidency of the UNSC for the month of July to ask whether PM Modi’s multi-nation tour had yielded any tangible outcome for India.

In a 29 June tweet, Bhatia launched a scathing attack on the central government’s Viksit Bharat agenda, questioning how it planned to accomplish this target when hunger and poverty run deep in India.

Soon after the Air India crash in Ahmedabad last month claimed more than 200 lives, Bhatia wrote: “63 percent said I should fly Air India in the next 2 weeks. But when asked if they would fly it, only 51 percent said yes.”

He also questioned the legal definition of poverty in India, asking whether those who earn $5 each day instead of the earlier benchmark of $3 can now be considered ‘not poor’.

Reacting to Union Home Minister Amit Shah’s remark last month that Indians who speak English “will soon feel ashamed”, Bhatia said it illustrated how politicians wanted to take India back to the pre-British era.

In another post on X in the aftermath of the AI-171 crash, Bhatia asked: “Do you really think the 4th largest economy in the world should still be having plane crashes due to systemic failures?”

 

In one of his tweets in early June, Bhatia had said that Delhi tops the list of five most polluted cities in the world. He urged Indians to stop celebrating GDP growth and focus on the AQI index.

Criticising the government’s efforts to locate the terrorists who executed the Pahalgam attack, Bhatia shared a candid image of a man trying to kill a fly with a bazooka.

In another rather cryptic post on 31 May, Bhatia remarked in an apparent dig at the Indian government, “The country that taught tolerance to the world over 1000s of years is ruining its global brand by promoting untruths and misinformation.”

In another post on X in June, the Hotmail founder wrote that Indians must think long and hard before celebrating predictions of the country being on track to become the fourth largest economy.

More recently, Bhatia trained his guns at traffic management in Bengaluru.

In another post on X, Bhatia gave his two cents on UP Energy Minister Arvind Kumar Sharma chanting ‘Jai Shri Ram, Jai Shri Bajrang Bali’ when constituents surrounded him to complain about power cuts in the state.

Taking a jibe at BJP MP Kangana Ranaut’s remarks in Mandi during her visit to her flash floods-stricken parliamentary constituency, Bhatia said she has no intention to help the people and lacks leadership skills.

Bhatia also had some advice for the political class: as long as they “want to ‘rule’ and people think they need to be ‘ruled’—not ‘served’—nothing will truly change”.

(Edited by Amrtansh Arora)


Also Read: #ByeByeAP to #LuluBackInAP: Naidu’s moves to make Andhra ‘business friendly’ & woo back investors


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