Infographic: The top 8 startup wars of 2015

The fledgling but cut-throat world of startups is always bursting at the seams -- be it because of ambition or competition.

It is no surprise, then, that executives at some of India's vaunted startups have not been able to stop themselves from getting into a war of words with their rivals.

In this feature, we profile some verbal exchanges that broke out between various members of the startup industry.

Flipkart vs Snapdeal

Earlier this year, homegrown e-tail major Flipkart launched #AcchaKiya, an advertising campaign that preceded with the question 'Nahi khareeda?'. But in a classic case of ambush marketing, Snapdeal stole a march over its rival by running a similar campaign called "Accha kiya bata diya #YahanSeKharido"

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Flipkart vs Snapdeal: Part II

In a direct salvo directed at Flipkart, Snapdeal co-founder Kunal Bahl, in an interview with Economic Times, expressed his belief that his firm would have overtaken its rival in sales by March 2016. Flipkart hit back almost immediately, with Head of Commerce Mukesh Bansal rubbishing Bahl's claim.

Rohit Bansal vs Sachin Bansal

In what appeared to be a casual remark aimed at explaining why Indian tech companies have been, of late, making a beeline to Silicon Valley to hire good talent, Snapdeal Co-Founder Rohit Bansal told the Wall Street Journal that Indian software engineers were steeped too much in the country's IT services culture -- implying they may not be innovative enough. The opinion attracted some criticism, and Flipkart's Sachin Bansal did not miss the opportunity to dig in.

Flipkart vs Amazon

A Reddit user posted a picture of an Amazon packaging lying at Flipkart's office -- noting that even India's largest e-tailer orders from its close-on-its-heels foreign rival. Flipkart hit back, explaining -- a bit meanly -- why it was lying there. Amazon took it in spirit and replied back in a good-natured way (perhaps also reminding Flipkart that its founders once worked at Amazon) that won many thumbs-up.

Rahul Yadav vs Alok Kejriwal

The ecommerce behemoths weren't the only ones bickering. There was also Rahul Yadav. He fought many battles, but the one that stood out was between him and Alok Kejriwal (founder of Games2Win), when the latter questioned the ubiquity of Yadav's erstwhile company Housing's Look Up campaign.Yadav and his colleagues responded rather crudely, going so far as to deface Kejriwal's Wikipedia page. But after Yadav was fired from Housing and the new management started resorting to layoffs, Kejriwal had the last laugh.

Rahul Yadav vs Bhavish Aggarwal/Deepinder Singh Goyal

Even as he was fighting a boardroom battle with Housing.com investors prior to his dismissal as CEO, Yadav announced he would gift away all of his shares (reportedly worth Rs 200 crore, then) to the company's employees, because the 26-year-old was "too young to worry about money" -- a move that some termed as a noble act and others dismissed as a PR stunt. Yadav then proceeded to dare Ola founder Bhavish Aggarwal and Zomato's Deepinder Goyal, both of whom had been critical of his conduct, to undertake a similar act. In response, they dismissed his move curtly.

Ola vs Uber

One day, Ola started communicating on Twitter with TaxiForSure -- a smaller peer that it had taken over a few months back -- in language a social-media observer described as "PDA" (public display of affection). All was fine till rival Uber came in, seeking to throw in a little promotional plug of its own, but not before Ola hit back, taking a dig at Uber's controversial surge-pricing plan.

DineOut vs Zomato

After restaurants-listing website Zomato started its table-booking service, founder Deepinder Goyal was quoted by an Indian Express article as saying his company wanted to be the first in the space. Only that, a company called DineOut had already been operating in the space for three-and-a-half years, and evidently doing well. So DineOut took on Zomato over the claim with an open letter, after which the latter responded on Twitter saying it had meant it wanted to be "number 1". Soon after, the chiefs of the two companies joined in, and it went downhill from there.

Read the full conversation trail here.