Saturday, October 31, 2015

ET AWARD STARTUP SPECIAL.....and the award goes to ENTREPRENEUR OF THE YEAR

 `Mega Plans'
to Disrupt Indian Ecommerce


...and the award goes to ENTREPRENEUR OF THE YEAR
KUNAL BAHL Cofounder, Snapdeal

The Entrepreneur of the Year award went to Kunal Bahl,
the co-founder and CEO of online marketplace Snapdeal.
Bahl, along with another contender for the award, Bhavish
Aggarwal, the cofounder of Ola, were part of the jury,
but went out of the room when the rest of the jury
deliberated the category.
One juror said Bahl had demonstrated remarkable maturity ,
got top talent for the company and recently raised money
at a valuation of $5.5 billion (about `35,000 crore) from
top global investors. One jury member quoted a senior
bureaucrat as saying “Kunal is the next Sunil Mittal.“
Bahl, a Wharton graduate -who alongside childhood friend,
schoolmate and IIT Delhi alumnus Rohit Bansal, founded
Snapdeal in 2010 -has over the last two years, increasingly
shifted the online marketplace from being just another
ecommerce company to building a complete ecosystem
of goods and services.
“It is a phenomenal feeling that validates the many years
our team has invested in building a platform that changes
lives of millions of small businesses in India. This is surely
the highlight of our entrepreneurial journey , one that
encourages us to only aim higher and create significant
impact for our country ,“ said the 31-year-old in response
to being chosen as The Economic Times Entrepreneur of
the Year 2015.
From snapping up mobile recharge platform Freecharge
for about $400 million in March to getting about 2,50,000
sellers to transact on the Snapdeal platform and then
providing them with access to cheap capital, Bahl has been
a man on a mission.
When he decided in 2011 to change Snapdeal's business
model from a group buying site to an online market place,
he had to face numer ous naysayers. However, his decision
proved prescient, with Snapdeal comfortably topping its
target to sell fashion products worth $2 billion this fiscal.
The challenge is even big ger now, as the company embarks
on creating an cosystem that will not only ecommerce
ecosystem that will not only provide products ranging
from electronics to yachts and apartments, but also services,
including utility bill payments and mobile recharges.
 “I always knew he had fire in the belly,“ said Vinod Dham,
 father of the Pentium chip, whose venture capital fund
was an early investor in Snapdeal.
The Snapdeal co-founder said the company achieved
$4 billion (about `26,000 crore) n total value of goods
sold (gross merchandise value or GMV) in August.
Given the current landscape, the CEO probably puts it
best when he says,
 “The plans are mega!“
ET19OCT15

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