Blog

Kunal Bahl, the Co-founder and CEO of Snapdeal, is counted among the pioneers of ecommerce in India. The 37-year-old’s journey has been an inspirational one, yet filled with many obstacles.  

Growing up, Kunal was inspired by his grandfather, a military man, and may have learnt a thing or two about tiding over obstacles from him. 

Despite failing to secure an IIT rank in 2001 — “I remember I just went and played cricket for two-three hours that day,” he recalls — Kunal managed to find his entrepreneurial streak, and went on to build Snapdeal as one of the earliest successes in India’s startup ecosystem. 

In a freewheeling chat with Tarun Davda of Matrix Partners, Kunal talks about his education in the US, moving on from failures, and finally launching Snapdeal — a platform with 200 million listings across 600 product categories. And the rest, as they say, is history. Read more. 

You can listen to the Matrix Moments podcast here.

The Interview

‘See us. Hear us.’ is a powerful movement enabled by WhatsApp that champions for women’s visibility and voices by providing them tools to go past whatever stands in their way of success and growth. 

As part of this initiative, YourStory recently held an insightful panel discussion featuring Neha Bagaria, Founder and CEO, JobsForHer; Shweta Rajpal Kohli of Sequoia Capital, and Deepthi Ravula, CEO of We Hub, to discuss the need for women to champion each other, the shifting paradigm of workplaces, and the role of tech in enabling women entrepreneurs. Watch the video.

Editor’s Pick: Prime Ventures Partners Podcast

In this episode of the Prime Ventures Podcast, Vivek Sunder, Chief Operating Officer at Swiggy, shares valuable insights on startup hiring and understanding evolving customer behaviour. 

In a conversation with Sanjay Swami, Managing Partner, Prime Venture Partners, he says that the combination of both right and left brain is vital even though the current approach is more focussed on the left-brain. Read more.

Startup Spotlight

How SaaS startup Profit.co is demystifying OKR in the modern era

In 2018, Bastin Gerald constantly heard friends, who worked in large tech companies, struggling to simplify Objectives and Key Results (OKR) practices — a collaborative goal-setting protocol for companies, teams, and individuals. A practitioner himself, he began working on Profit.co — a SaaS platform that helps enterprises adopt the OKR methodology and measure outcomes. The startup has since built a base of over 1,100 customers, up from 900 in 2019. It clocks 10 users per customer, on average. Read more. 

News & Updates

• Overseas education platform Leap, which runs Leap Finance and Leap Scholar, raised $17 million in Series B funding led by Jungle Ventures, along with Sequoia Capital India and Owl Ventures. It will use the funds to expand its product portfolio, strengthen its team across business and technological functions, and more.

Before you go, stay inspired with… 

“Be as close as possible to customers if you are an entrepreneur and be ready for successive stages of growth by having many solutions for your ecosystem.”

— Abhinav Asthana, Founder and CEO, Postman

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