Kunal Bahl & Rohit Bansal on Diversification

Bahl is co-founder of AceVector Limited, the holding company that now houses Snapdeal, Unicommerce and Stellaro Brands — a structural answer to the question of how the founders reorganise their corporate identity after Snapdeal's failed-unicorn phase.

In 2022, Snapdeal adopted the group corporate identity of AceVector, a holding structure that bundled Snapdeal with Unicommerce and Stellaro Brands — a reorganisation that distanced the e-commerce brand from its failed-unicorn past and reframed the founders as portfolio operators rather than single-business builders.

The founders' big strategic bet was to build an ecosystem of apps and services around the core marketplace — FreeCharge ($400M acquired April 2015), Shoppo, Unicommerce, Exclusively, lending and a WeChat-style messenger — modelled on Facebook's bundling of WhatsApp and Instagram, with Bahl arguing that social was the leading indicator for how Indian e-commerce would evolve.