Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal: The Founders Behind Snapdeal’s Rise, Fall, and Reinvention
Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal, Snapdeal Founder duo, are among the most recognisable names in India’s internet business history. They are the entrepreneurs behind Snapdeal, one of India’s earliest large-scale e-commerce companies, whose rise, fall, reinvention, and survival mirrors the evolution of the Indian startup ecosystem itself. Founded in 2010, Snapdeal began as a daily deals platform at a time when online shopping was still unfamiliar to most Indian households. Over the next decade, it grew into a venture-backed marketplace that challenged global giants, attracted billions in capital, and later faced one of the most public downturns in Indian startup history.
This is the story of who Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal are, what they built, when and where they built it, why they made the decisions they did, and how those decisions shaped Snapdeal’s destiny. From student days abroad to returning home with ambition, from building a coupon company to running a full-fledged e-commerce marketplace, their journey captures the optimism, excess, pressure, and resilience that define Indian internet businesses.
Their story unfolds across Delhi, Silicon Valley boardrooms, Indian middle-class homes discovering online shopping, and funding meetings that shaped the fate of Snapdeal. It is a story driven by belief in India’s digital consumer, by painful lessons about growth at all costs, and by the emotional toll of building under constant public scrutiny.
For FoundLanes.com readers, this long-form founder story is not about glorifying success or exaggerating failure. It is about understanding how two founders navigated ambition, capital, competition, and self-doubt while building one of India’s most talked-about startups. The Snapdeal founder story of Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal remains a defining chapter in India’s startup history, filled with hard-earned lessons that continue to influence founders today.
1. Background and Early Life
1.1 Early life and family background
Kunal Bahl was born in India and spent part of his early years moving across cities due to his family’s professional commitments. His upbringing exposed him to both stability and uncertainty, shaping an early comfort with change. His parents placed strong emphasis on education, discipline, and global exposure, values that later became central to his entrepreneurial mindset.
Rohit Bansal also grew up in a middle-class Indian household, where academic achievement and professional success were seen as the primary routes to security. Unlike the romanticised startup stories of garage beginnings, both founders came from backgrounds that valued structure and predictable career paths.
1.2 Education and early influences
Kunal Bahl moved to the United States for higher education, enrolling at the University of Pennsylvania, where he studied entrepreneurship and innovation. Exposure to Silicon Valley thinking, startup culture, and venture capital deeply influenced how he saw business possibilities in India. He also interned and worked with early-stage ventures, gaining firsthand experience of building from scratch.
Rohit Bansal studied at the Indian Institute of Technology before also gaining exposure to international business environments. His strength lay in operations, systems, and execution, complementing Bahl’s product and vision-driven thinking. Their partnership later worked because of this balance, one that many Snapdeal insiders often described as functional rather than flashy.
2. Founder and Company Overview
Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal never positioned themselves as the public faces of a movement. In an ecosystem where founders are often encouraged to build personal brands alongside their companies, the Snapdeal founders chose a quieter path. They were pragmatic to the core, more interested in unit economics, operational scale, and market reach than in media narratives. In the early years, they rarely spoke about vision in abstract terms. Instead, their conversations focused on execution metrics, partner onboarding, logistics reliability, and customer acquisition costs. This restraint was not accidental. It reflected a belief that credibility in Indian e-commerce would come from scale and consistency, not charisma.
Their working relationship was built on complementary strengths rather than shared spotlight. Bahl led product direction, partnerships, and long-term opportunity assessment, while Bansal anchored execution, internal systems, and day-to-day operational discipline. Insiders often noted that decisions were debated intensely but implemented quickly once aligned. This founder dynamic created a culture that rewarded problem-solving over posturing. While it limited their individual visibility, it helped Snapdeal move fast in its formative years, especially when the market itself was still being defined.
2.1 Company overview and offerings
Snapdeal was founded in 2010 at a time when online commerce in India was still experimental for most consumers. The company began as a daily deals platform, taking cues from Groupon’s global model but adapting it to Indian price sensitivity and merchant behaviour. Early offerings were simple: discount coupons for restaurants, salons, spas, and local service providers. This model allowed Snapdeal to acquire users quickly, understand local merchant dynamics, and build a transaction engine without the complexities of inventory-led commerce.
As user adoption grew and ambitions expanded, Snapdeal made a decisive pivot into a marketplace model. The platform began hosting third-party sellers across categories such as electronics, fashion, home goods, and lifestyle products. This transition was not just strategic but structural. It required building seller onboarding systems, logistics partnerships, customer support infrastructure, and payment reliability at scale. Snapdeal’s offering evolved into a broad-based e-commerce marketplace aimed at accessibility and affordability rather than curated premium experiences. The company positioned itself as a platform where value mattered more than brand aspiration, a choice that deeply influenced its growth trajectory.
2.2 Target audience and market served
From the outset, Snapdeal focused on India’s price-conscious middle class. Instead of concentrating primarily on metro cities and premium consumers, the company actively targeted shoppers from Tier 2 and Tier 3 towns, many of whom were first-time online buyers. These customers were less driven by brand loyalty and more by discounts, cash-on-delivery options, and trust in delivery. Snapdeal’s platform design, pricing strategy, and marketing reflected this reality.
This focus helped Snapdeal scale rapidly in underpenetrated markets where competition was initially limited. It also allowed the company to build strong merchant relationships with small and mid-sized sellers who were underserved by other platforms. However, this positioning came with trade-offs. Lower average order values and thinner margins made profitability harder to achieve at scale. As competitors began chasing the same segments with deeper capital and broader ecosystems, Snapdeal’s value-first approach became both its defining strength and a strategic constraint.
2.3 Year of founding and business stage
Founded in 2010, Snapdeal’s most aggressive growth phase occurred between 2014 and 2016. During this period, it was widely regarded as one of India’s top three e-commerce players, competing directly with Flipkart and Amazon for market share, seller attention, and consumer mindshare. The company raised significant capital, expanded its workforce, and invested heavily in logistics and marketing to fuel growth.
The years that followed forced a reassessment. Intense competition, rising costs, and shifting market dynamics led to restructuring, downsizing, and strategic refocusing. Snapdeal scaled back operations, exited non-core initiatives, and narrowed its category focus. While it no longer operates at the scale of its peak years, the company remains active as a leaner, more focused marketplace. Its journey reflects not just growth and decline, but adaptation, offering a realistic portrait of what long-term survival looks like in India’s high-pressure startup ecosystem.
3. The Problem, Insight, and Trigger
At the time Snapdeal was conceived, Indian commerce sat in an awkward middle ground. Consumers were highly motivated by discounts and bargains, yet there was no organised digital platform that helped them reliably discover, evaluate, and redeem such offers. Local merchants, especially restaurants, salons, and service providers, depended on foot traffic and word of mouth for customer acquisition. Marketing was fragmented, inefficient, and difficult to measure. On the consumer side, online payments were viewed with suspicion, delivery reliability was inconsistent, and trust in digital transactions was low. The founders recognised that the real problem was not demand, but confidence. People wanted value, but they needed a low-risk reason to try online commerce for the first time.
3.1 Personal insight behind the idea
Kunal Bahl’s exposure to daily deals businesses in the United States provided a clear reference point. He had seen how platforms like Groupon used discounts as an entry mechanism rather than an end product. The insight was not about copying a model, but about adapting its psychology. In India, price sensitivity was far higher, and the cost of a bad experience was greater because trust in online platforms was still fragile. Bahl believed that discounts could act as a bridge. A consumer might hesitate to buy a product online at full price, but a heavily discounted local service felt like a safer experiment. Rohit Bansal complemented this thinking by grounding it in execution reality. He understood that without reliable fulfilment, merchant coordination, and customer support, even the best idea would collapse under scale. Together, they framed the opportunity as a trust-building exercise disguised as a value proposition.
3.2 Trigger moment to start
The decisive moment came when Bahl returned to India and saw the gap firsthand. Despite rapid mobile adoption and growing internet access, digital commerce remained underdeveloped and fragmented. Transactions were rare, platforms were inconsistent, and most consumers still preferred cash-based, offline interactions. This contrast between global possibility and local reality became the trigger. Along with Rohit Bansal, Bahl decided that the easiest way to introduce Indians to online transactions was not through expensive products, but through discounts on familiar local services. The goal was simple but strategic: lower the psychological barrier to online buying, build habitual usage, and let trust compound over time. Snapdeal began not as an ambition to dominate e-commerce, but as a practical attempt to change consumer behaviour one discounted transaction at a time.
4. Early Days and Initial Struggles
In the earliest days, the founders believed the value proposition would sell itself. Discounts, they assumed, would be enough to convince local merchants to come onboard. The reality was far more complicated. Many small business owners were unfamiliar with digital platforms and deeply sceptical of anything that delayed cash in hand. Concepts like deferred payouts, customer lifetime value, and repeat discovery meant little to merchants operating on thin daily margins. There was also fear of losing control. Business owners worried about being flooded with bargain-seekers who might never return at full price. This early naivety forced the founders to confront a hard truth. Market readiness mattered as much as product design, and education was going to be a core part of execution, not a side task.
4.1 Entrepreneurial initial struggles
On the consumer side, friction was everywhere. Convincing users to pay online required overcoming fears of fraud, failed transactions, and poor service delivery. Even when users bought coupons, redemption often became a point of conflict. Merchants disputed validity, staff were unaware of ongoing deals, and customers expected seamless experiences that the ecosystem was not yet ready to deliver. Internally, Snapdeal’s early team handled much of this manually. Founders and employees spent long hours on calls, visiting merchant locations, resolving disputes, and reassuring both sides. Growth was not driven by automation in the beginning, but by human effort. These struggles tested patience and belief, but they also gave the founders a deep, ground-level understanding of the problems they were trying to solve.
4.2 What turned out to be harder than expected
Technology was never the biggest challenge. Trust was. Consumers needed assurance that their money was safe and that services would be honoured. Merchants needed confidence that payments would arrive on time and that discount campaigns would not damage their businesses. Balancing these fears required constant intervention and repeated changes to operating processes. Snapdeal had to rethink payout cycles, customer support protocols, and merchant onboarding standards multiple times. Each iteration was a response to real-world friction rather than theoretical planning. What emerged from this phase was a more resilient operating mindset. The founders learned that in India’s early digital economy, building belief and reliability was far harder, and far more important, than building features.
5. Failures, Setbacks, and Self Doubt
Between 2016 and 2018, Snapdeal entered the most difficult stretch of its existence. The e-commerce landscape had shifted dramatically. Competition intensified, capital became more selective, and growth no longer masked structural weaknesses. Customer acquisition costs rose sharply, discount-led growth became harder to sustain, and burn rates attracted uncomfortable scrutiny from investors. What had once been a race to scale turned into a fight for survival. Every decision carried weight, and the margin for error narrowed quickly. For the founders, this phase was no longer about ambition or market leadership, but about whether the company could continue to exist in a meaningful form.
5.1 Early failures and major setbacks
The cracks that emerged during this period were the result of earlier choices. Rapid expansion had stretched logistics, seller management, and customer support beyond their limits. Inconsistent seller quality led to delivery delays, product issues, and rising customer complaints. Each failure chipped away at consumer trust, which is far harder to rebuild than it is to lose. Internally, teams were overwhelmed, and operational fixes often lagged behind public expectations. The failed merger discussions with Flipkart became a defining moment. What was meant to be a strategic reset turned into a public signal of distress. The episode reinforced how exposed Snapdeal had become to external perception, adding reputational pressure to an already fragile situation.
5.2 Moments of self-doubt and emotional lows
For Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal, this period was as much an emotional reckoning as a business one. Years of effort, belief, and identity were tied to Snapdeal’s trajectory. As headlines shifted from growth to decline, self-doubt crept in. The constant narrative of a “rise and fall” did not just shape public opinion, it seeped into internal morale. The founders later acknowledged the psychological toll of navigating uncertainty at scale. Decision-making under relentless scrutiny, responsibility toward employees, and the fear of irreversible failure weighed heavily. These moments forced them to confront the personal cost of entrepreneurship, a reality rarely visible during years of rapid ascent.
6. Validation and Early Traction
Snapdeal’s first meaningful validation came not from investor meetings or media attention, but from its users. Early adopters initially signed up for discounted offers on local services, but a surprising number returned to make repeat transactions. This behaviour indicated that the platform was offering more than just temporary deals—it was creating convenience, reliability, and a sense of trust in online commerce. For the founders, seeing customers willingly return marked a pivotal confirmation that their marketplace pivot was on the right track. It showed that the challenge was not just attracting attention, but sustaining engagement through consistent, tangible value.
6.1 Early revenue growth or feedback
Between 2012 and 2014, Snapdeal experienced a noticeable uptick in both transaction volume and merchant onboarding. More merchants were willing to list products and services, and consumers were completing purchases with increasing frequency. This early revenue growth served as tangible proof of product-market fit. The operational processes that had been painstakingly refined—payment settlements, delivery coordination, and customer support—were finally translating into measurable business results. This period also drew the attention of venture capitalists, signalling external validation. Investors recognized not only the market opportunity but also Snapdeal’s ability to execute at scale in a challenging Indian environment.
6.2 Why this moment changed belief
The combination of repeat users and measurable growth shifted the founders’ confidence from theoretical to tangible. Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal saw that Indian consumers were willing to engage with online platforms regularly, not just sporadically or opportunistically. This reinforced their conviction that Snapdeal could evolve beyond a deals-based model into a broader e-commerce marketplace capable of competing with both domestic and global players. The moment was transformative—it validated years of hard work, trial and error, and strategic risk-taking, proving that the Indian market could embrace digital commerce at scale if approached with patience, reliability, and a focus on trust.
7. Funding, Money, and Growth Constraints
Snapdeal’s growth trajectory was powered largely by external funding rather than bootstrapping. Starting with seed capital from early-stage investors, the company quickly moved to larger funding rounds, attracting global names including SoftBank. These investments were pivotal in enabling aggressive expansion—hiring talent, building logistics infrastructure, scaling marketing campaigns, and onboarding thousands of merchants across the country. Funding not only provided the resources to compete with Flipkart and Amazon but also signaled credibility to the market and partners, helping Snapdeal punch above its initial scale.
7.1 Capital challenges and cash flow issues
While significant funding fueled rapid growth, it also created a double-edged dynamic. Large capital inflows encouraged high operating spend—heavy marketing, deep discounting, and fast expansion of seller networks—without necessarily building operational efficiency. When market conditions shifted and growth slowed, this capital-heavy model became a burden. Cash burn accelerated, and investor expectations intensified. The founders had to rethink how to manage spend, restructure operations, and maintain momentum without relying solely on constant injections of external capital. This period highlighted the challenge of balancing growth ambition with financial discipline, a tension familiar across Indian e-commerce.
7.2 Early growth limitations
Snapdeal’s early business model leaned heavily on discounts and aggressive marketing to attract users. While effective in driving adoption, this approach limited margin sustainability. Repeat purchases were often motivated by deals rather than brand loyalty or platform preference, making long-term profitability difficult. Operational costs—logistics, customer support, and dispute resolution—added pressure. These limitations were not unique to Snapdeal; they reflected systemic challenges in India’s e-commerce ecosystem, where consumer price sensitivity and delivery infrastructure constraints constrained early-stage profitability. Recognizing and addressing these limits became a crucial step in Snapdeal’s journey toward operational resilience and sustainable growth.
8. Team Building and Leadership Evolution
As Snapdeal scaled rapidly, the urgency to fill roles sometimes outweighed careful assessment of cultural and functional fit. The company brought in talent quickly to support operations, marketing, and technology, but this speed occasionally created friction. Teams were misaligned on priorities, communication channels were unclear, and processes became inconsistent. Early hiring mistakes highlighted that building a capable team was not just about numbers—it was about cohesion, shared values, and the ability to execute under pressure. The founders learned that talent acquisition at scale required patience, structured evaluation, and alignment with the company’s long-term vision.
8.1 Delegation challenges
For founders who had built the company from scratch, letting go of operational control was far from easy. Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal initially struggled to trust mid-level managers with critical decisions. Every client issue, merchant dispute, and product adjustment had once passed through their hands. Delegating responsibility meant accepting the risk of errors and stepping back from day-to-day involvement, which was both emotionally and professionally challenging. Over time, they realised that sustainable growth depended on empowering capable leaders, creating clear accountability frameworks, and resisting the urge to micro-manage. This shift allowed them to focus on strategic planning, partnerships, and scaling operations effectively.
8.2 Leadership learnings over time
The founders’ evolution from hands-on operators to strategic leaders was gradual but decisive. They began prioritising decisions that affected long-term resilience rather than chasing immediate metrics. This included streamlining organizational processes, defining clear reporting structures, and investing in leadership development across teams. They also learned to anticipate market and operational risks instead of reacting to each crisis individually. By cultivating a culture of ownership and accountability, Bahl and Bansal ensured that Snapdeal could operate efficiently even when they were not directly managing every task. These leadership lessons became central to the company’s ability to survive challenges and remain relevant in India’s fiercely competitive e-commerce landscape.
9. Growth, Scaling, and Operational Challenges
Snapdeal’s strategy of offering value and affordability struck a chord with price-sensitive consumers in Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities. This approach allowed the company to differentiate itself from competitors focused on urban, premium audiences. However, the same positioning created challenges in metro markets, where brand perception and premium offerings drove loyalty. The founders learned that go-to-market strategies could not be one-size-fits-all. Success required tailoring marketing, product assortment, and messaging to different consumer segments, balancing scale with relevance, and constantly monitoring how value propositions translated into repeat engagement.
9.1 Scaling challenges
As Snapdeal expanded rapidly, operational complexity grew exponentially. Managing logistics across India’s diverse geography, ensuring timely deliveries, coordinating thousands of sellers, and maintaining high customer service standards revealed structural weaknesses. Small inefficiencies that were manageable in early stages became significant bottlenecks at scale. The founders faced the challenge of redesigning workflows, strengthening supply chain partnerships, and implementing robust systems to maintain reliability while continuing growth. These scaling pressures underscored the importance of anticipating operational strain before expansion rather than reacting after the fact.
9.2 Operational breakdowns and fixes
Responding to these challenges required a disciplined rethink of priorities. Snapdeal streamlined operations by narrowing focus to categories and regions where it had competitive advantage. Processes were standardized, accountability frameworks were reinforced, and non-core initiatives were cut to reduce strain on resources. The company invested in improving logistics reliability, seller training, and customer support protocols, creating a more predictable and trustworthy user experience. These operational fixes allowed Snapdeal to stabilize growth, maintain consumer confidence, and emerge leaner, illustrating that scale without discipline can undermine even a strong market position.
10. Personal Sacrifices and Burnout
Building Snapdeal demanded relentless commitment, and the personal cost for Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal was significant. Long working hours, frequent travel, and constant investor and media interactions left little room for personal downtime. Privacy became a rare luxury, with every strategic move and misstep scrutinized publicly. Early decisions that required their direct involvement often came at the expense of family, social life, and personal wellbeing. The founders’ experience illustrates the hidden toll of leading a high-growth startup in a competitive and visible ecosystem.
10.1 Burnout phases and emotional pressure
Periods of intense stress, especially during Snapdeal’s toughest years between 2016 and 2018, brought acute emotional strain. Media narratives highlighting the company’s challenges amplified pressure, turning professional challenges into personal anxieties. The responsibility of sustaining thousands of employees’ livelihoods added another layer of weight. The founders openly acknowledged that managing this constant tension required resilience, reflection, and learning to navigate uncertainty without letting it overwhelm decision-making.
10.2 Impact on personal life
The sustained pressure eventually reshaped how both founders approached work-life balance. In later years, they became more deliberate about setting boundaries, protecting time for personal commitments, and delegating operational responsibilities to trusted teams. This shift was not just a response to fatigue but a strategic recognition that sustainable leadership required preserving mental, emotional, and physical health. The experience underlined a critical lesson: scaling a company is not just a financial or operational challenge, but also a deeply human one.
11. Lessons, Beliefs, and Values
Through Snapdeal’s journey, Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal internalized that growth alone does not guarantee survival. Scaling rapidly without operational discipline, robust processes, or reliable customer experiences creates vulnerabilities that can unravel quickly. They learned that capital, while enabling expansion, cannot replace strong fundamentals. Equally, they discovered that trust—whether with customers, merchants, or employees—is fragile and costly to restore once broken. These lessons underscored the importance of building a business that balances ambition with structural resilience.
11.1 Beliefs that changed over time
Early in Snapdeal’s story, the founders were focused on rapid market capture, aggressive discounts, and high-velocity growth. Experience and setbacks gradually shifted their perspective. They began prioritizing sustainable business models, measured expansion, and operational efficiency over headline-grabbing metrics. The shift reflected a deeper understanding of Indian e-commerce dynamics: long-term survival required a balance between market share ambitions and financial, operational, and cultural sustainability.
11.3 Non-negotiable values
From the early days to later stages, certain principles remained non-negotiable. Integrity with stakeholders—whether investors, merchants, or customers—was central. Respect for employees and their contributions became a guiding principle in leadership and organizational design. Long-term thinking replaced short-term opportunism, informing strategic decisions and daily operations alike. These values became the foundation for decision-making and a lens through which the founders evaluated opportunities, risks, and trade-offs, shaping Snapdeal’s identity as a company that sought to grow responsibly and resiliently.
12. Present Challenges and Future Vision
Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal, Snapdeal Founder duo, remain deeply engaged in India’s startup ecosystem. Beyond Snapdeal, they have focused on supporting early-stage founders through investment and mentorship, applying lessons learned the hard way. Their current leadership philosophy emphasises resilience, patience, and capital efficiency.
The long-term vision is not about recreating past scale but about building durable businesses that can survive cycles of hype and correction. The problem that continues to obsess them is how to build consumer internet companies in India that balance affordability with profitability.
The Snapdeal founder story of Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal stands as a reminder that entrepreneurship is rarely linear. It is shaped by timing, decisions, ego, fear, belief, and recovery. For FoundLanes.com readers, their journey offers not a template to copy, but a mirror to reflect on what it truly means to build in India.
The FoundLanes View
At foundlanes, Culture Circle’s journey stands out not just for its headline-grabbing numbers but for what it reveals about building modern Indian startups—where trust, verification, and transparency can drive rapid adoption, even as losses widen. The Culture Circle 10x revenue growth reflects a clear market insight executed at speed, alongside the inevitable pressure of scaling through heavy spending on technology, hiring, and marketing. Stories like this matter because they show entrepreneurship as it truly unfolds: fast, demanding, and full of trade-offs, where short-term financial strain is often the price paid for long-term relevance and scale.
