The dealmaker- an interview with Kunal Bahl

Having transformed a village in Uttar Pradesh so much so that it's now called Snapdeal.com Nagar, the e-commerce specialist, Kunal Bahl tells us how its done.

The start up
There weren't many career options I explored beyond academics growing up. I went to school at Delhi Public School RK Puram, New Delhi. We grew up in a middle class family and there was no concept of pocket money. But, if we wanted something, it was usually not refused, as long as the request was reasonable.

There was a significant focus on academics in our household from the beginning, and this discipline probably ensured that both my brother and I ended up doing reasonably well at studies. He went on to go to IIT-Delhi and then IIMCalcutta. I went to Wharton, which is honestly, something I regret in hindsight. But, it's never too late.

Nerves of steel
Entrepreneurship at a young age, especially if you have a good academic background, is a fairly irrational decision, because the short team economic opportunity costs as a result of becoming an entrepreneur would never make sense otherwise.

We faced every kind of challenge-funds, hiring good people, finding the right business model, dealing with daily problems, convincing potential partners that wisdom doesn't only come with age and 24 year olds can be good at something too. For both, me and my friend and co-founder, Rohit Bansal, giving up was never an option. After a certain point, we didn't know of a life outside building our company.

It was challenging, and continues to be. Rohit and my biggest contribution to our business is the team we built. Many respected people in the industry often tell us that Snapdeal has the best team in the Internet industry in India, and that's of course just not Rohit and I - it's our entire team of rockstar professionals.

Lose some, get some
Sacrifices are part of life and definitely a part of building a business. Both Rohit and I try our best to take time off to go on a vacation once or twice a year, or a Sunday off and play video games. We still go out for frequent dinners after work, which has been a ritual since the early days of the business. I would go as far as to say that our friendship when we first met in class 11th over a decade ago was based on our mutual love for food.

To be honest, professional life does take over most things, but as long as you are having fun, it doesn't really matter. One should spend time doing what they love and lead a regretless life. And for us that special thing is our company.

The good samaritan
We always wanted to build a socially responsible company, and recently we came across a situation where we found out about a village in Uttar Pradesh. The village has approximately 2,000 residents (about 650 families) and didn't even have access to basic necessities like water. We realised that we could solve this problem very easily. By investing a reasonably small amount of Rs 2 to Rs 3 lakh, we installed 15 hand pumps so that instead of walking 1 km everyday, the villagers now have easy access to clean water within 50-100m of their homes.

I spent a couple of days in the village, interacting with the villagers, and trying to understand how we can further help them, and how this initiative of ours, changed their lives. The community wanted to extend its gratitude through the gesture of renaming their village after our company to Snapdeal.com Nagar. One of our colleague's family hails from a place very close to Shiv Nagar and that is how the problems of the community were brought to our attention.

Food, movies and books
I love food and right now, I am experimenting with some innovative food related concepts, which may eventually be commercialised, but that is not the intent with which I am pursuing them. So, there is a lot of experimentation that is happening in my kitchen. In addition to food, I like reading and travelling, but my undying love is movies. Hopefully, one day I can write a book, which I can make a movie about. Now that would be something.

Source: http://in.education.yahoo.com/news/yeduindiatoday/-dealmaker-20110718

The “we” factor of generation Y and the need of “involvement”

In the book “how cool brands stay hot-Branding to Generation Y” Joeri Van Den Bergh and Mattias Behrer(2011) mentioned that there is an ancient saying that bears much truth: ‘people resemble their times more than they resemble their parents’. More than half of the world’s population is under the age of 30. Gen Y (those born between 1980 and 1996) is currently one of the largest demographic groups and will soon outnumber the Baby Boomers generation. Unlike previous generation, this youth generation has been bombard with commercial messages from their birth. However, they have learned to filter out all those loud messages and they have been empowered by their parents and teachers to have an opinion of their own and never merely believe whatever somebody is proclaiming. To survive in the current, cluttered and fragmented environment, today’s teens and adolescents use collective peer wisdom and social connections. Youngsters pick and mix individual parts of media to create their own personalized products and services that fit their individual needs. The Dell and Nike website gives freedom to their consumers to pick and mix the products to create their own computers or shoes.

This Gen Y is a generation of “givers” and ready to contribute to the “we” factor than remaining as “I”. There are an increasing number of forums, sites, movie uploading sites like youtube and torrents (ie. Piratebay) which offer free advices, do-it-yourself demos, movies and having enormous content of valuable material for “free use” which shows statics that though they are as competitive, commercial and ambitious as any other generation in history but they are abandoning the prevailing ethos of their parent’s generation of baby boomers and adhering more to the values of their grandparents, the war generation. In a 2006 USA Today poll, 61 percent of thirteen to twenty five year old felt personally responsible for making difference in the world; 81 percent have volunteered in the past year; 69 percent consider a company’s social and environmental commitment when deciding where to shop; and 83 percent trusted a company more if it was socially/ environmentally responsible.

In his lecture, Thomas W. Malone of MIT mentioned parallels between the emergence of democracies in political and business worlds, and technological advances in communications. He notes that in the age of the Internet, businesses are growing decentralized, markedly departing from “command and control” organizational models to newer environments where “workers seek advice instead of approval.” Empowered by new technologies, workers will exercise ever greater strength in important decisions -- even while corporations expand and sprawl across borders.

Unfortunately, India is still following the Top Down model and this model wont work in current scenario where collaborative initiatives are the only way to sustain in a new digitally democratic world.