Kunal Shah, one of India’s sharpest fintech minds and founder of CRED, sits down with Think School to share profound insights on what sets high performers apart in business. This is not just a casual discussion but a deep dive into Kunal’s philosophies on hiring, culture, sales, Indian consumer psychology, compounding growth, and leadership clarity. From his early struggles to building CRED into a multi-crore empire, Kunal uncovers philosophies that many entrepreneurs and business leaders can apply to scale sustainably and build powerful careers.

Early Life and Foundation of Sales Acumen

Kunal’s journey began humbly—working early on as a delivery boy, selling mahendi cones, and even pirated CDs. These formative experiences instilled in him an intricate understanding of sales, persuasion, and human motivations. He reflects that most people in India are poor at sales because they’ve never truly needed to persuade to survive. Sales is fundamentally about persuasion, not manipulation or lying; it is understanding what the other person wants and creating a win-win.

He encourages young people (16-22 years) to consciously learn persuasion by observing those good at convincing others, mimicking them, and practicing asking for help—something many avoid due to insecurities linked to shame. Kunal stresses that the ability to ask for help and embrace rejection is a critical stepping stone to growth. People who view salespeople as shameless often are those unconstrained by the fear of judgment, leading to faster compounding in skills and success.

Hiring Philosophy: Building A+ Teams by Values and Growth Potential

Kunal outlines a refined methodology for hiring that goes beyond resumes and interviews:

Focus on values: The people you hire should share the core values you embody as a founder. This alignment is critical because the company culture reflects the founder.
Look for expounders: Candidates who are self-aware, willing to receive feedback, and understand their weaknesses. These people “compounds” quickly because they learn continuously.
Assess growth slopes: Past trajectory is often a predictor—people who have grown rapidly historically tend to continue doing so unless disrupted by major life events.
Judge coachability: Especially for ex-founders or candidates with failed ventures, those who take ownership and do not externalize blame are often prime for growth.
High intrinsic motivation: Motivating someone externally is nearly impossible; ambition and ambition-driven performance must be intrinsic.
A vs B players: Kunal agrees with the concept that people are either A or B players; transitions exist but are rare and usually happen due to major setbacks that unlock new motivations.

Interviews remain archaic and imperfect, so on-the-job performance over months is a better gauge. The interview should be about collecting diverse data points, but real judgment happens in real work.

Company Culture: The Role of Leadership and Values

Kunal emphasizes culture as a living evolving organism, akin to an app that requires constant bug fixes and feature enhancements to stay relevant. Crucially:

Culture depends on what you tolerate: If trust is a core value but poor trust-related behaviors are ignored, the culture weakens.
Explicit values at CRED:
- Earn trust in everyone and every interaction.
- Be right a lot reflecting judgment and decision-making ability.
- High agency (skin in the game) meaning taking ownership and proactive problem-solving.
- Compounding—continuous learning and evolution.
- Truth seeking that breaks hierarchy and values the best idea regardless of source.
Leadership behavior trumps formal values: The founder’s or leader’s daily behavior models culture more than posted values.
Scalability of culture: As companies grow, leaders can’t interact with everyone daily. They embed culture via hiring, appraisals, and rituals that repeat core values.

A telling example is CRED’s principle of never launching a product they wouldn’t offer friends and family—this sets a high bar of quality and accountability.

Measuring and Encouraging Compounding Growth

“Compounding” is a core concept discussed extensively. It refers to the exponential personal and professional growth of employees driven by:

Rapid learning: Continuous questioning, absorbing, and evolving.
Teaching ability: Those who teach what they learn solidify knowledge and help others grow.
Openness with new information: Instead of defending beliefs, compounding people seek to understand and adapt.
Use of tools (like AI) appropriately: Efficiency in solving problems is more important than just deploying tools without thought.

To evaluate compounding:

Look for people who have grown consistently in their previous roles.
Assess how they react to setbacks; resilient people are likely compounding fast.
Check their curiosity and question-asking ability.
Observe their communication and ability to teach others.

Kunal cautions against mere consumption of content (podcasts, reels) without applying or explaining it — being able to articulate deeply is a better success predictor than raw intelligence.

Sales to the Indian Consumer: Understanding Trust Deficit & Emotional Dynamics

Selling in India presents unique challenges because of cultural and behavioral factors:

India is a trust-deficit society and sales often require empathy and relationship-building.
Unlike Western consumers who value efficiency highly, Indian consumers may value entertainment, social signals, and storytelling more.
Effective sales require not pushing products blindly but solving real problems that matter to the customer at the right time.
Empathy in sales is crucial—becoming the person customers rely on for solutions rather than just pushing a product.
Indian consumers are distinct because of imprecise language, differing perceptions of time, and cultural nuances.

Kunal illustrates with examples like sunscreen not selling if the customer is preoccupied by health worries—successful salespeople read these signals and build trust over time.

First Principles of Funding and Market Size (TAM) Analysis

Kunal lays out a pragmatic framework for entrepreneurs considering funding:

Capital is to accelerate growth by trading equity; it is not necessary to start a business.
Most Indian businesses are bootstrapped from small borrowing (family, friends).
Investors look for ventures that can generate returns that justify the high risk (typically aiming for 80x+ returns).
Total Addressable Market (TAM) matters deeply; a startup tackling a niche problem with a tiny customer base may struggle to attract funding.
Entrepreneurs need to think of TAM dynamically, starting with a niche and expanding with new offerings and avenues.
Understand that news and media glorify funded startups, but many successful businesses never take external investment.
The right team, competence, agency, storytelling ability, and TAM are key for investors.

An important point Kunal makes is that many Indian entrepreneurs misunderstand the basics of TAM and funding, sometimes chasing trends that are ephemeral.

Leadership, Feedback, and Creative Confidence

Leaders must foster environments of creative confidence where junior employees and newcomers feel safe to voice opinions and questions without fear of judgment.

Hold separate, regular feedback sessions focused only on feedback to ensure the right mindset.
Treat feedback as a gift and actively encourage curiosity about blind spots for continuous improvement.
Guard against arrogance—a founder or leader whose perception about themselves outpaces reality creates a feedback vacuum leading to decline.
Leaders set the tone on culture; their behavior models will be imitated.

Kunal shares that new joiners give the most brutal yet useful feedback because they see things with fresh eyes and fewer assumptions.

Additional Noteworthy Highlights

Indian consumer divergence from the West: Indians value social aspects, entertainment, and relationships more than pure transactional efficiency.
Impact of social media on youth: Kunal observes a worrying trend where social media fuels fragile identities that discourage curiosity and acceptance of feedback.
Role of failures and setbacks: Setbacks reveal character—A players react constructively and grow; B players tend to avoid risks and stagnate.
Efficiency vs. process: In many Indian contexts (like weddings), inefficiency is culturally valued as social bonding, contrasting with Western efficiency focus.
Power of “why” questions: Fostering daily curiosity about the world around you builds problem-solving skills organically over years.
Truth seeking in organizations: This value helps overcome hierarchy and bias, promoting ideas by merit rather than status.

“Kunal Shah Reveals How to Scale Your Business & Career Like a Pro”