KUNAL SHAH .

Kunal Shah Founder of CRED 

Kunal Shah is among a number of Indian entrepreneurs who have launched new ventures for the second time. An MBA dropout from Mumbai’s Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies, Shah had earlier launched ventures such as PaisaBack, a cashback and promotional discount campaign platform for retailers. But he shutdown PaisaBack to set up FreeCharge in August 2010 along with Sandeep Tandon. The startup was acquired by Snapdeal in April 2015. After the acquisition, FreeCharge continued to be run as an independent entity under Shah's leadership. He, however, left the firm in October 2016. Subsequently, in July 2017, Axis Bank acquired FreeCharge. Kunal’s second stint at entrepreneurship comes a little over two years after he stepped down as the chief executive of FreeCharge.

Being a philosophy student and then an MBA dropout, he proved that if you have the vision and determination to work for your dreams nothing will stop you. He is the co-founder of Freecharge which was launched in 2010 along with his friend Sandeep Tandon.

His vision and prediction of the booming market of online recharging did not go wrong. After its successful run, it was acquired by Snapdeal for around $400 million. He later founded the members only credit card payment app, CRED in 2018.

Apart from that Kunal Shah is also an active angel investor who has helped significantly in the growth of startups like Spinny, Unacademy etc. He did not forget his experiences after he became successful. He yearns towards creating an ecosystem where entrepreneurship will thrive in India. He strongly believes that his will to see more entrepreneurs from India is what pushes him forward. Here are a few startups in which Kunal Shah has invested.

Plum is an employee based health insurance startup that was founded in 2019 by Abhishek Poddar and Saurabh Arora. Over the years, it has completely altered the notion of employee health insurance stack by introducing innovative fraud detection algorithms. Its real-time designs and pricing makes it extremely easy for the users to navigate through their website.

Plum aims to build better and deeper API integration along with insurers like care health, ICICI Lombard, new India assurance etc. In 2021, Kunal Shah along with a few others had invested around $20 million in the firm.

Plum aims to use these funds to augment its business development, engineering and operations teams. It also envisages building new products that are suitable for small businesses that have smaller teams.

CRED, an app that helps you pay and manage your credit card bills in exchange for a bunch of rewards, has raised $80 million. The round was led by partners of DST Global and also saw participation from existing investors Sequoia Capital and Ribbit Capital.

With the Series C round of funding, the Kunal Shah-led startup’s value has almost doubled to $800 million – from its valuation of $450 million a year ago. This brings the just two-year old startup closer to being a unicorn (with a valuation of over a billion dollars). It raised funds twice in 2019 alone – $125 million series A round and $120 million series B funding from Sequoia, Ribbit Capital, and more.