WhatsApp gets a new boss as Meta hires Indian CRED founder Kunal Shah and invests $900 million in startup

Meta is betting on India for WhatsApp’s next chapter, as it has appointed entrepreneur Kunal Shah to lead the messaging app from Will Cathcart, who will step down after nearly seven years at the helm to take on a new role building products at the company.

The move comes alongside $900 million in funding led by Meta Indian fintech giant CREDIt is structured through a combination of primary and secondary stock purchases. The deal will make Meta a minority investor in CRED, which said Shah would step down as CEO while retaining his personal stake.

India is the largest market for WhatsApp, where More than 500 million users They represent a large share of the app’s global base of more than three billion people. The country has also emerged as a key battleground for Meta’s ambitions in business messaging and digital payments, areas seen as crucial to WhatsApp’s next phase of growth.

Cathcart, who has led WhatsApp since 2019, has overseen a period of rapid expansion that has helped the service become one of the most popular messaging apps in the world, including with more than 100 million users in the United States. Under his leadership, WhatsApp expanded beyond private messaging with the launch of products such as Communities, Channelsand AI integrationsdeepening its focus on business messaging.

But WhatsApp’s efforts to push towards digital payments have yielded mixed results. While paying via WhatsApp It gained traction in IndiaService Struggle To replicate the scale and engagement achieved by local competitors such as PhonePe and Google Pay, leaving plenty of room for growth in one of the world’s largest payments markets.

Meta is betting that Shah’s experience building a consumer internet company in India can help launch the next phase of WhatsApp’s growth.

In a statement, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said Shah built CRED into “one of India’s most important technology companies” and brought the “building mindset and global perspective” needed to run the world’s largest messaging app.

The appointment comes as Meta seeks to expand WhatsApp’s business beyond messaging, especially in areas such as payments, commerce and business communications. India, as WhatsApp’s largest market, has been central to these efforts.

In 2018, Shah founded CRED, a fintech platform with 17 million monthly active users, having earlier built FreeCharge, one of the first digital payments startups in India. In addition to his operational roles, he has become one of India’s leading startup investors, backing over 250 companies and serving in advisory and industry leadership roles across the country’s technology and financial services sectors.

Meta Investments values ​​CRED at approximately $4.5 billion on an after-the-money basis. The startup was last valued at around $3.6 billion in a funding round in May 2025, less than its valuation. Peak valuation: $6.4 billion In 2022. Prior to its Series F round, the company had raised more than $1 billion from investors.

As part of the transition, Miten Sampat, who has overseen strategy and finance at CRED since 2020, will assume the role of interim CEO with immediate effect. Shah will retain his stake in the company after stepping away from day-to-day operations.

CRED said its board and leadership team are working on a long-term management structure as the company prepares for an eventual initial public offering, with the new capital expected to support growth across its payments, lending, insurance and wealth businesses.