Kunal Bahl & Rohit Bansal 2.0: India’s most prolific angel investors

A team of young first-time entrepreneurs was about to close a series A fundraising round recently when they got a call from Bipin Shah, Partner at Titan Capital. Titan is a seed-stage investment company that Snapdeal cofounders Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal established in 2015 to formalise their growing portfolio of personal investments.

Over the years, Titan has grown to have a portfolio of over 200 startups, including recent Unicorns such as home services platform Urban Company and digital payments startup Razorpay and early hits like ride-hailing major Ola.

Shah’s pitch to the first-time entrepreneurs was simple: we like the space you are in, take our money. But it was a tough fundraising round to get into, with three of India’s top funds already committed to co-lead it. The founders asked Shah what Titan would get to the table. His reply was as expected: Kunal Bahl, his experience, and his network. “So let’s do a call with Kunal tonight?,” asked one of the cofounders. “First commit that you will take at least Rs 60 lakh ($80,000) for your ongoing seed financing round,” Shah replied.

These entrepreneurs were new to the fundraising world and didn’t know what to say. “Is this a general practice? He wanted a promise that we would take their funding even before getting Kunal Bahl on a call,” said one of the founders during a recent chat with The CapTable.

Another startup had a similar experience.