Kunal Bahl & Rohit Bansal on Unit Economics

He champions what he calls 'Indicorns' — profitable, sustainable Indian companies — over massive, loss-making unicorns, an explicit reframing of the success metric away from headline valuation and toward durable unit economics, a position shaped directly by Snapdeal's own experience of being valued at $6.5 billion and then collapsing.

Bahl distills entrepreneurial success into three pillars — Focus, Economics and Culture — arguing that founders must resist the temptation to chase the next trend and instead concentrate on building one successful business, a stance clearly shaped by Snapdeal's own loss of focus during its failed ecosystem-of-apps phase.

Under Economics, he advocates for a profitable business model, deep market understanding, opportunistic seizing of openings, and financial prudence — a markedly different emphasis from the growth-at-all-costs playbook he had run during Snapdeal's $6.5 billion peak, and an explicit course-correction in his public messaging.

Morgan Stanley had rated Snapdeal in 2015 as one of India's most capital-efficient startups on a GMV-to-capital-raised ratio of 3.2 — second only to ShopClues at 3.8 and ahead of Flipkart at 2.4 and Amazon India at 1.0 — a metric that flattered the firm at peak but did not anticipate the model's exposure when funding dried up.