At Rs 46.5 cr, Snapdeal’s Kunal Bahl, Rohit Bansal top paid unicorn execs in FY15

Top corporate executives getting paid hefty salaries running over 7 digit figures is not something that will raise eyebrows of many in today’s world. But, it will surely raise interest quotient of several if key executives in the startup industry, too, are paid salaries that could envy many of their counterparts in several well-established private firms. [caption id=“attachment_2975798” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Kunal Bahl (left) and Rohit Bansal[/caption] Founders of e-commerce company Snapdeal, a unicorn or those startups valued $1 billion, fall in this club, says a report in TechCircle. In fact, Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal, co-founders of Snapdeal, were among the highest-paid executives during the year ended 31 March 2015, the report said. Bahl and Bansal received Rs 46.5 crore each in compensation for the financial year ending FY15, with stock options accounting for a chunk of the total pay packet, the report says analysing the data from the company balance sheets. Going by the total salary figures paid, both the founders were jointly the seventh-highest paid executives in the country, the report says. Of the Rs 46.5 crore compensation, both the founders received stock options to the tune of Rs 45 crore each. Interestingly, both were paid just Rs 4.5 crore each in the preceding financial year 2013-14, which means they saw a whopping 933 percent surge in their overall salaries. Not to mention, other startup founders’ salaries are no match. For instance in FY14, Quikr’s Pranal Chulet received Rs 1.87 crore package. Similarly, Zomato’s Deepinder Goyal was paid Rs 48 lakh and Pankaj Chaddah received Rs 35 lakh in the period under review. Other founders of Ola, MuSigma and ShopClues also were paid compensation less Rs 1 crore. Not just that, the Snapdeal founders’ salaries even bettered the compensation of the CEOs of Infosys, Wipro and Tata Consultancy Services, which received Rs 35 crore in total salary in 2014-15. It will be interesting to see the salary packages, especially, of the Snapdeal founders in the last financial year (2015-16), given the dwindling business prospects of the company in the wake of cut-throat competition from its competitors Flipkart and Amazon. Read the entire report here.