Kunal Bahl is an Indian entrepreneur and co-founder and CEO of the e-commerce platform, Snapdeal. If there is a desire to do something great in life, every difficulty and obstacle in the path of success becomes easy to tackle. This quote fits perfectly with the experience and struggle of Kunal Bahl, founder, and CEO of Snapdeal, who has gained special recognition in the field of Indian e-commerce segment.
Kunal, who once worked for a monthly salary of Rs 6550 in a private company, is now the source of livelihood for more than two thousand employees across the country. His elder brother was an IIT student; therefore, because of pressure, his parents always wanted him to get into IIT too.
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Kunal prepared for two and a half years but didn’t get any success, and thus he gave up his dream of getting into IIT. He started his career in a manufacturing company with a salary of Rs 6550. A year later, under pressure from parents, he moved to the US for higher studies. There in the USA too, he worked in a private company for some time but joined Microsoft at the end of the visa. His visa application was canceled, and this was a big push for him. But Kunal saw it as an opportunity for himself as 2007-08 was the first phase of the tech boom in India.
He returned to India as the visa was not extended despite the company’s efforts and then he spent some time thinking about business. In the year 2009 started the discount coupon book company ‘Money Saver’ along with his friend Rohit Bansal decided to open an offline couponing company. Under this, people were given some discount on eating, shopping, etc. in restaurants by selling coupons. But in a year and a half, the target of selling 1.5 crore coupons was stuck at just 53% hence the company was at a loss. The daily deals platform gradually progressed and expanded itself into an online e-commerce platform named snapdeal in the year 2011.
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Gradually Snapdeal rose to the pinnacle of success, and investors from all over the world started showing interest and investing in it. Snapdeal had a valuation of $ 6.5 billion around 2016 and had raised funds from companies such as SoftBank, China’s e-commerce company Alibaba and Canadian pension fund Ontario Teachers Pension Plan (OTPP). However, later market share began to decline in the hands of competing companies Flipkart and Amazon India.