‘When I saw the design…’: Hotmail CEO Sabeer Bhatia reacts to Indian doing garba on Vietnamese airport tarmac

Hotmail co-founder Sabeer Bhatia has reacted to the video, which shows a group of Indian tourists performing ‘Garba’ on the tarmac of a Vietnamese airport. Culture, he said, is more about behavior than public display.The video, which went viral on Instagram, Reddit, X and other social media platforms, shows several Indian travelers dancing in a circle near a parked Vietjet Air plane. The Garba performance appears to have taken place shortly before boarding or after passengers disembarked. Some social media users described the occasion as a joyful celebration of Indian culture abroad, but others criticized the group for dancing in a restricted area of ​​the airport.Bhatia responded to the video onReplying to Bhatia, a user said: “Garba is the cultural heritage of India and is spreading across the world”Bhatia also fired back: “Randomly… in a shared space… for travel. You need to upgrade your thinking…”Airport tarmacs are considered sensitive operational areas and the movement of passengers is often tightly controlled due to safety and security protocols. In the viral video, some passengers can be seen stopping to watch the dance while others continue walking in the area next to the plane.Many online users felt that performing garba near an airplane was inappropriate and disruptive to Indian tourists overseas. Some say such incidents reinforce negative stereotypes about Indians traveling abroad. Others defended the group, saying the dance was harmless and represented another country’s joyful celebration of Indian culture.Sabeer Bhatia is an Indian-American entrepreneur best known for co-founding Hotmail in 1996, one of the world’s first free web-based email services. In recent years, he also co-founded ShowReel, a platform that evolved into an AI-based entrepreneurship course.