Kunal Shah

FOUNDER OF FREECHARGE

Kunal Shah is an Indian entrepreneur, founder and CEO of FreeCharge.

Early life

Shah graduated with Bachelor of Arts degree in Philosophy from Wilson College, Mumbai and briefly pursued MBA from SVKM's NMIMSbefore dropping out. He started his career as a junior programmer at a business process outsourcing startup. Shah's first startup venture was a company named Paisaback, which provided cash-back promotions for organised retailers.

Kunal made a cameo appearance in the 4th episode of TVF Pitchers where he played the role of a startup event judge.

Career

Shah founded FreeCharge in 2010, along with Sandeep Tandon, seeing the potential of online recharging in a growing market. In April 2015, FreeCharge was acquired by Snapdeal for an estimated amount of $400 million. Shah was appointed as the new CEO of the company. Kunal also led the acquisitions of Wishberg and Preburn in 2014.

FreeCharge is an e-commerce website headquartered in Mumbai, Maharashtra. It provides online facility to recharge any prepaid mobile phone, postpaid mobile, DTH & Data Cards in India. On 8 April 2015, Snapdeal acquired Freecharge in what is being referred to as the second biggest take over in the Indian e-commerce sector so far, after the buy out of Ibibo by rival MakeMyTrip, and the biggest Venture Capital exit in India to date. According to The Economic Times, the deal is expected to be anything around US$400 to US$450 million.

On 27th July 2017 Axis Bank acquired FreeCharge for $60 million