This is why Flipkart`s Sachin Bansal and Snapdeal`s Kunal Bahl were involved in Twitter spat!

Zee Media Bureau

New Delhi: When CEOs of top brands spar on Twitter it makes news! If you think that it is the brand rivalry spilling on to social media space, then its way too off the mark!

The reality is that goading a competitor or calling for a spat over Twitter, has become a part of brand strategy.

As per strategists, it pays to be informative, to be the source of news, and above all- to be sassy. Lively, light, high-spirited tweets, sometimes bordering on being rude or impudent, is all part of the mantra to showcase the brand's personality or aggression, which actually helps in engaging the Twitterati.

Flipkart and Snapdeal's CEO's, who have broken into a Twitter spat a couple of times seem to be perfecting the strategy.

They were quite vocal, one more time--on Friday , making jibes at each other. Flipkart's CEO Sachin Bansal, while referring to the Chinese ecommerce giant Alibaba's plans of setting up direct operations in India, tweeted, "Alibaba deciding to start operations directly shows how badly their India investments have done so far".

Snapdeal's co-founder Kunal Bahl retorted with equally acerbic response and tweeted, "Didn't Morgan Stanley just flush $5 billion worth market cap in Flipkart down the...", accompanied by a toilet emoticon. "Focus on your business, not commentary".

Bahl was obviously taking a jibe at Morgan Stanley's marking down of Flipkart's shares by 27%, bringing down the country's largest eCommerce firm's valuation to around USD 11 billion from USD 15.2 billion.