Purpose Beyond Profit: How Kunal Vats is Redefining Success Through Impact

While excelling academically, Kunal was deeply involved in co-curricular activities, particularly with Enactus, a global platform for social entrepreneurship. He co-founded Project Avya, a sanitation-focused initiative that designed and distributed affordable water filters in Delhi slums. During our chat, he shared, “Growing up in suburban and Tier 2 India, I witnessed firsthand how communities suffered from a lack of access to basic amenities. That reality drove me to initiate something grassroots during college,” he explains.

In parallel, Kunal immersed himself in high-stakes case competitions, representing SSCBS nationally and internationally. His team won the Harvard Global Case Competition and secured podium finishes at the HSBC Nationals and other strategic contests. These experiences not only sharpened his financial and analytical skills but also cultivated a sense of collaboration and structured problem-solving—traits that would serve him well in his consulting career.

Kunal interned with Goldman Sachs during his undergrad, but a consulting role at Bain & Company ultimately captured his interest due to its diversity of work and collaborative team culture. Since 2021, he has worked at Bain’s Private Equity Group, advising North American clients through various phases of the PE lifecycle, including financial due diligence and market assessments, primarily across technology, healthcare, and B2B SaaS sectors.

“Consulting gave me an unmatched skill set in solving complex, ambiguous problems, often in high-pressure environments,” he says. At Bain, Kunal also took on leadership and mentoring roles, contributing to his growth as a people leader while working across time zones and cultural boundaries.

Yet, despite this strong trajectory in consulting, Kunal never lost sight of his passion for social impact. In 2024, he chose to take a secondment and spent six months in Kenya, working with JobTech Alliance, an impact accelerator focused on solving unemployment among African youth. His work there was multifaceted: from providing venture support to early-stage startups to creating investment theses and facilitating connections between impact investors and startup founders.

“I was working in the founder’s office, directly supporting three to four startups simultaneously,” he shares. “We helped these startups prepare for investor pitches, demo days, and structured advisory services. I also interacted with green job startups to help them gain visibility and secure investment approvals. This experience helped me transition from a structured consulting environment to a chaotic but rewarding startup world.”

This secondment was more than a short-term professional experience—it solidified his long-term goal: to launch his own impact accelerator in India. Kunal envisions a platform that provides early-stage social tech startups in education, healthcare, and sustainability with both capital and strategic guidance. His model aims to bridge a critical gap in India’s startup ecosystem: the lack of scalable support and funding for mission-driven ventures that aren’t yet ready for VC-level investments.

“The challenge is that many high-potential social startups never make it to the stage where they can raise equity funding. I want to create a space where they get the help they need in those formative years,” he says.

With a strong professional journey, Kunal sought help from Shabri Malik at Admissions Gateway to build his MBA applications. “Shabri was incredibly hands-on, patient, and responsive,” Kunal shares. “She helped me become more concise in my writing—especially when I struggled with word count in my essays. She also pushed me to think more strategically about how my experiences connected. At a time when I was personally overwhelmed, she even took the initiative to make edits herself when I couldn’t.”

From helping him choose between different resume formats to conducting multiple rounds of mock interviews, Shabri’s support was unwavering. “Initially, I came across as too formal in interviews. Through our mocks, she helped me find a more natural, conversational tone. That made a huge difference in me getting into Kellogg.”

Kunal’s path to an MBA wasn’t a linear sprint but a thoughtfully constructed mosaic of life experiences—from army camps to boardrooms to Nairobi startups. His story is grounded in empathy and action, and his future is firmly rooted in the vision of building infrastructure for social innovation in India.

Post-MBA, he plans to return to Bain in the U.S. in the short term to further deepen his consulting expertise, eventually transitioning to impact investing and launching his accelerator. It’s a mission that feels both personal and pragmatic—fueled by the discipline of his upbringing and the entrepreneurial fire he discovered along the way.

“I believe real change comes from combining the heart of service with the rigor of strategy,” Kunal says. “That’s the kind of leader I want to be—and an MBA is a key milestone in getting there.”