Pranay Chulet

Pranay Chulet is the founder and CEO of Quikr, a cross-category online classifieds.

Pranay Chulet witnessed first-hand the disruption that Craigslist had caused by taking classifieds online and quickly realized there was an opportunity to bring similar disruption to the Indian market as well. Sensing the enormous potential, Pranay moved back to India to start the country’s first homegrown online classifieds platform, Quikr. In 2008, when the platform was first launched, there was a level of mistrust as Indians were used to being able to touch and feel what they were buying or selling and Quikr allowed people to do just that, by positioning it as a handshake platform where buyers and sellers could meet, chat, bargain and strike deals.

His deep understanding of consumer behaviour and market trends in India has made Quikr India’s leading cross-category classifieds platform.  It is currently the largest and broadest cross-category classifieds platform catering to over 30Mn unique visitors every month. It operates in 14 categories and connects buyers and sellers across 1200 cities and towns in India.

While he started the company as a conventional playbook based classifieds platform, in the year 2016, he took another bold step and made Quikr the first horizontal classifieds platform to have chosen the verticalization path. He expanded the brand’s footprint in C2C, Services, Cars, Homes, and Jobs, thereby building categories that have strong growth potential through these verticals. It wasn’t too long before Quikr pioneered several other innovations including Missed Call service, Quikr Nxt, Maximum Selling Price (MSP), or QuikrScanner amongst many others.

His idea was to bridge the gap between aspirations & affordability for Indian consumers and he did exactly that through multiple innovations and industry-firsts. Under his leadership, Quikr became the first and only platform to bring the convenience of e-commerce to pre-owned goods through Quikr Doorstep which facilitates price negotiations, payment, pick-up, and delivery across the country.

Today, Quikr’s business advances the local circular economy, where the business model encourages people to engage in the waste-to-wealth concept.  His vision of putting second-hand first is gaining popularity, considering the environmental benefits associated with reusing products.

The mining town in India where Pranay Chulet grew up had just about 10,000 people and he was the first student from his school to even attempt the admissions test for the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology (IIT). Acing the test, he successfully qualified as an engineer and moved on to win a gold medal at India’s premier business school, the Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta (IIM-C).

Shortly after, he started at Procter & Gamble, consequently moving to New York, spending over 11 years in management consulting with a series of companies including Mitchell Madison Group. His work at Walker Digital earned him a US patent in the area of matchmaking between buyers and sellers. Subsequently, Pranay helped large US media companies such as movie studios and publishers evaluate and launch new digital businesses as a Principal at Booz & Co. in New York. While at Walker Digital, Priceline’s incubator, his entrepreneurial spirit came to fore where he earned a patent for a system that allowed small businesses to provide most relevant online references to prospective customers.

Pranay graduated from IIM Calcutta with a Gold Medal in 1996 and earned a B.Tech. from IIT Delhi prior to that. He is an avid follower of films and likes them to the extent that he learned filmmaking at the New York Film Academy.