WhatsApp gets new chief as Meta taps India’s CRED founder Kunal Shah, and invests $900M in startup

Meta is betting connected India for WhatsApp’s adjacent chapter, naming entrepreneur Kunal Shah to pb the messaging app and win Will Cathcart, who is stepping down aft astir 7 years astatine the helm to instrumentality connected a caller product-building relation astatine the company.

The determination comes alongside a Meta-led $900 cardinal financing for Indian fintech elephantine CRED, structured done a operation of superior and secondary stock purchases. The woody volition marque Meta a number capitalist successful the CRED, which said Shah volition measurement down arsenic main enforcement portion retaining his idiosyncratic shareholding.

India is WhatsApp’s largest market, with more than 500 cardinal users accounting for a important stock of the app’s planetary basal of implicit 3 cardinal people. The state has besides emerged arsenic a cardinal battleground for Meta’s ambitions successful concern messaging and integer payments, areas seen arsenic captious to WhatsApp’s adjacent signifier of growth.

Cathcart, who has led WhatsApp since 2019, oversaw a play of accelerated enlargement that helped the work go 1 of the world’s astir fashionable messaging apps, including with much than 100 cardinal users successful the United States. Under his leadership, WhatsApp expanded beyond backstage messaging with the motorboat of products specified arsenic Communities, Channels, and AI integrations, portion deepening its absorption connected concern messaging.

But efforts by WhatsApp to propulsion into integer payments person delivered mixed results. While WhatsApp Pay gained traction successful India, the work struggled to replicate the standard and engagement achieved by section rivals specified arsenic PhonePe and Google Pay, leaving important country for maturation successful 1 of the world’s largest payments markets.

Meta is betting that Shah’s acquisition gathering a user net institution successful India tin assistance unlock WhatsApp’s adjacent signifier of growth.

In a statement, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said Shah had built CRED into “one of India’s astir important exertion companies” and brought the “builder mentality and planetary perspective” needed to tally the world’s largest messaging app.

The assignment comes arsenic Meta seeks to grow WhatsApp’s concern beyond messaging, peculiarly successful areas specified arsenic payments, commerce and concern communications. India, arsenic WhatsApp’s largest market, has been cardinal to those efforts.

In 2018, Shah founded CRED, a fintech level with 17 cardinal monthly progressive users, aft earlier gathering FreeCharge, 1 of India’s aboriginal integer payments startups. Beyond his operating roles, helium has go 1 of India’s astir salient startup investors, backing much than 250 companies and serving successful advisory and manufacture enactment positions crossed the country’s exertion and fiscal services sectors.

Meta’s concern values CRED astatine astir $4.5 cardinal connected a post-money basis. The startup was past valued astatine astir $3.6 cardinal successful a backing circular successful May 2025, beneath its peak valuation of $6.4 billion successful 2022. Before its Series F round, the institution had raised much than $1 cardinal from investors.

As portion of the transition, Miten Sampat, who has overseen strategy and concern astatine CRED since 2020, volition instrumentality implicit arsenic interim main enforcement with contiguous effect. Shah volition clasp his shareholding successful the institution aft stepping distant from day-to-day operations.

CRED said its committee and enactment squad were moving connected a longer-term absorption operation arsenic the institution prepares for an eventual archetypal nationalist offering, with the caller superior expected to enactment maturation crossed its payments, lending, insurance, and wealthiness businesses.