Kunal Shah Funded Startups | A Glimpse on the Investments by the Angel Investor - Kunal Shah

Kunal Shah is an Indian entrepreneur who has tried his luck and become successful in the industry through his hard work. He has successfully shattered the myth that only people with technical or management background can have a fortune in the business field.

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
Qoohoo
Mensa Brands
Unacademy
Onsurity
FamPay
Spinny
Carl Pei’s New Venture
FAQ

Plum

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.

Qoohoo

Qoohoo is a mobile app which allows creators to launch their private community that focuses on monetisation. It was founded by Vimal Singh and Aseem Gupta. Kunal Shah along with a few other angel investors invested close to $8 million in this creator-based social platform.

This Bangalore-based company will utilise the fund to further build on their engineering and product teams. As of now they have seven members and they aim to expand their team up to 10 to 12 in the next one year. The investment was announced in March 2021.

Mensa Brands

Mensa Brands is a startup founded by ex-Myntra and Medlife co-founder Ananth Narayanan. They aim to build global digital brands from India by collaborating with different entrepreneurs, by making investments into their business and by providing the company's expertise to scale the brand.

In May 2021, Kunal Shah along with other investors like Falcon Edge Capital, Northwest Venture Partners, Mukesh Bansal etc invested over $50 million in Mensa Brands during a series A funding. The startup plans to make use of the funds to improve their marketing strategies and working capital so as to work with more brands.

Unacademy

Unacademy is an online education platform that was founded in 2010. Since then the startup had been thriving, revolutionising the entire notion of online education in India. In 2015 Kunal Shah along with other angel investors like Sachin Bansal, Vijay Shekhar Sharma, Binny Bansal,  invested a total of $1 million in the startup. The funding was led by Blume Ventures.

Onsurity

It was launched in 2020 with just 700 SMEs with them as healthcare partners. Initially they only had around 70,000 users. The company's aim to democratise healthcare for all including small businesses was a very innovative idea which led to their expansion in a very short span of time.

The firm became the first digital platform in India that provides monthly employee benefit subscriptions to the users. In April 2021, this Nexus Venture Partners backed healthcare startup Onsurity received an undisclosed amount of funding from a group of investors.

Kunal Shah was a customer who turned into an active investor as far as the startup was concerned. The startup was also supported by other investors like Jitendra Gupta and Amit Lakhotia. The firm aims to develop their tech stack and enhance customer experience by utilising the funds received.

FamPay

FamPay is a Bangalore-based startup that aims at raising a financially aware generation of Indians. It was founded by Kush Taneja and Sambhav Jain. In June 2021 many investors especially Kunal Shah, Vladimir Tenev, Kevin Lin , Global Founders Capital  invested a whopping $38 million in series A funding that was led by Elevation Capital.

The firm plans to use the fund to build their leadership team and fuel future growth that accommodates more users through marketing and launching many more attractive features on their platform.

Considering the fact that more and more teenagers below the age of 18 are going to use smartphones, FamPay is gearing up to make use of this opportunity to create an early relationship with the future citizens. This is to ensure that the firm will become their go to brand when it comes to payments with smart cards without actually having a bank account.

Spinny

This startup was founded in 2015 by Niraj Singh. Currently it sells refurbished used cars. They sell around 1500 cars every month and their business is growing at a rate of 15% month on month. In June 2017 this startup received $1 million through series C funding. And as usual Kunal Shah was an active angel investor in this fundraiser.

Spinny aims to improve customer experience and expand business by strengthening technology and product utility through the fund received. Currently Spinny operates in more than nine city's and already has plans to expand to more cities by the end of 2021. However, Kunal Shah had announced earlier in June 2019 that he had fully exited Spinny.

Carl Pei’s New Venture

In December 2020, the OnePlus co-founder Carl Pei had announced that he will be going to start a new venture. However he did not share much details about the same. The angel investor Kunal Shah had his contribution in his new venture as well. They received seed funding of more than $7 million from people including Kunal Shah.

Other private investors including Kevin Lin, Steve Huffman, Paddy Cosgrave, Josh Buckley etc were part of it. All that we know about Carl Pei’s company is that it is related to consumer electronics.

Other Startups in which Kunal Shah has invested

• Zepo
• Bharat Bazar
• Innov8
• Betterhalf
• Blissclub
• Goalteller
• Antwak
• Razorpay
• DailyNinja
• Pocket Aces
• Voonik

FAQ

What is the qualification of Kunal Shah?

Kunal Shah graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Philosophy from Wilson College, Mumbai and briefly pursued an MBA from SVKM's NMIMS before dropping out.

What is the net worth of Kunal Shah?

The net worth of Kunal Shah is $800 million as of 2021.

Who is Kunal Shah?

Kunal Shah is an Indian entrepreneur and venture capitalist, he is also the founder of FreeCharge and Cred.