ET Awards 2015: Snapdeal cofounder Kunal Bahl wins Entrepreneur of the Year award

The Entrepreneur of the Year award went to Kunal Bahl, the cofounder 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 Rs 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 marketplace, he had to face numerous 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 bigger now, as the company embarks on creating an 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 cofounder said the company achieved $4 billion (about Rs 26,000 crore) in 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!"