Kunal Bahl Wiki, Age, Wife, Family, Biography & More

Kunal Bahl is an Indian entrepreneur and investor. He is the co-founder of the e-commerce company ‘Snapdeal, and the capital market company ‘Titan Capital.’

Wiki/Biography

Kunal Bahl was born on Sunday, 1 January 1984 (age 40 years; as of 2024) in New Delhi, India. His zodiac sign is Capricorn. Kunal completed his schooling at the Delhi Public School, R.K. Puram, New Delhi. In 2002, he enrolled in the University of Pennsylvania, and in 2006, he graduated from the Jerome Fisher Program in Management and Technology. Kunal pursued a degree in Operations and Information Management from The Wharton School in Pennsylvania, and Engineering from the School of Engineering and Applied Science, Pennsylvania (2002-2006). In 2006, Kunal did a one-year executive program in Marketing at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, United States.

Physical Appearance

Height (approx.): 5′ 5″

Hair Colour: Black

Eye Colour: Dark Brown

Family

Parents & Siblings

Kunal Bahl’s father, Rasiklal Meswani, was a businessman, and he passed away when Kunal was just 14 years old. Kunal’s mother is a retired interior designer. Kunal has 2 brothers named Nikhil Bahl and Viraj Bahl. Viraj Bahl is the founder and managing director of VRB Consumer (Veeba Food Services Pvt Ltd).

Wife & Children

Kunal dated Yashna for a long time before they got married in the year 2012. Yashna is the owner of a confectionery business. The couple was blessed with their first child in 2015, which was a daughter. In 2018, Kunal and his wife were blessed with a son named Aadidev.

Career

Snapdeal

In 2007, Kunal Bahl, along with his childhood friend Rohit Bansal, started a company named ‘Jasper Infotech Private Limited,’ which sold discount coupons, first offline and then online. In 2010, both partners founded a company called ‘Snapdeal,’ which initially sold customers discount coupons for restaurants, hotels, and movie theatres.

Later in 2011, Snapdeal was converted into a marketplace-based e-commerce company that now focuses on selling fashion, home, and general merchandise. Kunal is also an active angel investor having invested in 120+ technology companies in India, the US and South East Asia, across consumer internet, fintech, direct-to-consumer brands, AI, and deep-tech.

Titan Capital

In 2015, Kunal Bahl, along with Rohit Bansal, founded a new capital market company called ‘Titan Captial,’ which invests in entrepreneurs who are aiming to create wide-scale businesses in the market. The company has invested in various successful ventures that include Ola, Urban Company, Mamaearth, and Ofbusiness.

AceVector Group

In 2022, Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal founded ‘AceVector Group,’ which is a holding company of Snapdeal, Unicommerce, and Stellaro Brands.

Piramal Enterprises Limited

Kunal Bahl is the independent director of Piramal Enterprises Limited, a flagship company of Piramal Group, which is active in financial services and is involved in retail lending, housing financing, and vehicle financing.

Investcorp India SPAC

Kunal Bahl serves as the director of a leading Indian conglomerate and Investcorp India Acquisition Corp, a SPAC (as of 2023).

Controversies

Booked for selling medicines online

In 2015, an FIR was filed against Snapdeal’s CEO Kunal Bahl for the sale of prescription drugs on his e-commerce website. Maharashtra’s Food and Drugs Administration (FDA) Department raided the Jasper Infotech premises, which is the sole supplier of Snapdeal products in Mumbai. The FDA stated that the FIR claims that the website sold a few cough syrups and tablets online, which were only meant to be given out if they were officially prescribed by a medical practitioner. The FDA issued a notice to the company to delist all such products.

Summoned For Stealing Gaurav Dua’s Marketplace Model 

In 2017, an engineer and entrepreneur Gaurav Dua filed a complaint on alleged charges that the e-commerce company ‘Snapdeal’ had taken over his idea of connecting sellers and buyers through one platform. Additional Sessions Judge R K Tripathi of the Delhi High Court issued a legal summon to the CEO Kunal Bahl, COO Rohit Bansal, and former chief financial officer Vijay Ajmera in regard to cheating with Gaurav Dua by promising collaboration and stealing his “non-inventory holding marketplace model for retail.” The complaint was filed under sections 420 (cheating), 406 (criminal breach of trust) and 120B (criminal conspiracy) of the IPC, which was dismissed by a trial court earlier. Gaurav Dua then filed a revision petition before the sessions court.

Booked for selling fake products

In 2019, businessman and congress leader Inder Mohan Singh Honey from Kota, Rajasthan, filed a case at the Gumanpura police station in Kota, against the founders of Snapdeal, Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal, for delivering fake branded products. The founders were booked for cheating under section 420 of the Indian Penal Code. The complainant complained about receiving fake products from the Snapdeal website after ordering the original Woodland waist belt and a wallet. ^[1]NDTV

Sued by M/s Adept Biocare

In 2021, the founders of Snapdeal, Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal were sued by Mr Amandeep Chawla who is the owner of M/s Adept Biocare for allowing the sale of the drug – Suhagra-100 tablets, which contains Sildenafil Citrate, on its online portal without possessing a valid license. An individual named Manjunath placed an online order on Snapdeal for the tablets and received the order in November 2020. M/s Adept Biocare is the manufacturer and seller of the tablets and claimed that Snapdeal had no drug license to sell SUHAGRA-100. The founders and their company were charged under Section 18(c) of the Drugs and Cosmetics Act, 1940 (‘DC Act’), which is punishable under Section 27(b)(ii) of the DC Act. ^[2]The Legal 500

Awards & Honours

• 2014: Entrepreneurs of the Year Award at the 36th Bombay Management Association (BMA) Awards

• 2014: EY Entrepreneur of the Year – Startup 2014

• 2014: Nasscom NextGen Entrepreneur

• 2015: The Economic Times Entrepreneur of the Year Award

• 2015: AIMA Transformational Business Leader of the Year

• 2015: Indian Affairs Business Leader of the Year

• 2018: The Joseph Wharton Award for Young Leadership

• 2019: The Economic Times Comeback Award

Salary

Kunal Bahl earns Rs 3.5 crore (fixed compensation) annually from Snapdeal. He also gets a performance bonus of Rs 1.5 crore annually (as of 2024) ^[3]DNA

Facts/Trivia

• Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal were classmates at the Delhi Public School, R.K. Puram, New Delhi.
  

  Friends turned business partners, Kunal Bahl (left) and Rohit Bansal (right)

• In an interview, Kunal revealed that in 2009, their company ran out of funds due to which Kunal and Rohit had to pay the salaries of their employees from their personal accounts.

• In 2011, Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal took a visit to China and saw how giant the Chinese online marketplace Alibaba.com was. That’s when both of them decided to remodel their company ‘Snapdeal’ and make it a marketplace.

• Kunal was featured in the ET Top 50 Entrepreneur of India 2014 list.

• In 2014, he was ranked 25 on Fortune 40 under 40 most influential business leaders list.

• As of 2024, he is a member of the board of governors of the Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations (ICRIER).

• In 2019, he was appointed as a member of the Nasscom Executive Committee, which serves the interests of diverse members across sectors and regions and also provides the requisite governance to the same.

• In 2020, Kunal Bahl was appointed as the Chairman of CII’s E-Commerce Committee.

• He serves on the National Startup Advisory Council, a committee to advise the Indian government on efforts needed to build a strong startup ecosystem. ^[4]The Startup Lab

• When Kunal was in the United States, he worked with Microsoft for a little while until he was forced to leave the country as his US work visa application was rejected. ^[5]Kunal Bahl – LinkedIn