Kunal Shah

Kunal Shah is an Indian serial entrepreneur who has founded several notable financial technology companies, including Freecharge and most recently CRED.
Early life
He is a native of Mumbai, Maharashtra and spent most of the early part of his life in that city. He was born and raised in a Gujarati family.
His family owned a pharmaceutical distribution business in South Bombay and it was expected that he would go on to join his family business. However, contrary to all expectations, he decided to become an entrepreneur.
He started working at the early age of 15 and learned to juggle his education and career simultaneously.
Education
He completed his Bachelor of Arts degree in philosophy at the Wilson College, Mumbai.
He enrolled for an MBA at the , although he did not complete his MBA. Therefore he earned the title of a college dropout just like many other entrepreneurs. The company was owned by Sandeep Tandon, who would later help him and accompany him in many of his ventures.
Ventures
Paisaback
Paisaback was his very first venture, which he started in 2009. The company had tie ups with McDonald’s, Barista Coffee, Dominos, Croma to offer cash back to the customers which were routed through Paisaback. But the model couldn't compete with other players like Mysmartprice, CouponDunia and the rest.
Although the company lasted for only one year, the experiences learned from it would later be applied to Freecharge.
Freecharge
His very next venture Freecharge was started in 2010 and was sold to Snapdeal in 2015.
Freecharge was able to grow at an unprecedented rate of 1000% every year and eventually amassed 30 million customers before being acquired by Snapdeal in 2015.
CRED
His current venture is CRED, which is a payment gateway for credit cards. CRED currently holds a valuation of 806 million dollars and has received funding from Sequoia Capital, Tiger Global Management and DST Global.
In its first two years of operations, CRED has managed to achieve 20% of the market share among all credit card bill payment companies in India. CRED currently has 12 million customers with a valuation of 2.2 billion dollars and is a certified unicorn company.
Currently Sequoia Capital owns 15% of CRED, making CRED one of the major investments for the American venture capital firm. It also puts CRED in the small and elite club of Indian companies to have received investment from Sequoia Capital.
He prefers to drive around in a Vespa scooter and he has never owned a car.
He is married to Bhavna Shah, who like him is also a Gujarati.
He is also a winner of CNBC TV18's Dare 2 Compete Awards.
He has also made a cameo appearance in the 4th episode of TVF Pitchers, where he took the role of a startup event judge.

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