Meta announced on June 22 that Kunal Shah, founder of Indian fintech company Cred, will succeed Will Cathcart as head of WhatsApp after nearly seven years in the role [1, 2, 3, 4]. Cathcart will take on a new position at Meta focused on building products using artificial intelligence, saying "WhatsApp is in the strongest position it’s ever been — and that felt like the right moment to step back" [5].
Cred, based in Bengaluru, rewards users for timely credit card payments and has about 17 million users since its founding in 2018 by Shah, who also previously founded another Indian payments startup, FreeCharge [6, 7, 2]. Meta is investing $900 million to acquire a roughly 20% minority stake in Cred as part of the leadership transition [5, 8, 1, 2]. Despite the investment, Shah emphasized Meta will have no access to Cred's member data [6].
WhatsApp has over 3 billion users globally and about 500 million in India, which remains its largest and fastest growing market [6, 5, 7, 3]. Meta aims to expand WhatsApp’s monetization in India and beyond using tools like ads, paid subscriptions, payments, business services, and AI technologies [6, 8, 7]. Meta chief product officer Chris Cox described Shah as "one of India’s most respected entrepreneurs, a serious thinker, and a deeply good person" after consulting market leaders on WhatsApp's direction [9, 3]. Shah will step down as Cred CEO but retain personal shares and relocate to Meta’s Menlo Park headquarters to lead WhatsApp’s next phase [5, 4].
Mark Zuckerberg praised Shah’s "builder mentality and global perspective," calling Cred "one of India’s most important technology companies" and expressing eagerness to "continue to make WhatsApp the best service for billions of people and millions of businesses" [6].
The change comes as WhatsApp faces regulatory scrutiny in India over privacy concerns and data sharing with Meta [6]. Meta values Cred at $4.5 billion post-money following the investment [1, 3]. On June 22 to 23, Meta completed the $900 million transaction to acquire its stake in Cred [5, 8, 10, 1, 2].
