Meta is banking on India for WhatsApp’s next chapter, naming entrepreneur Kunal Shah to lead the messaging app, succeeding Will Cathcart, who is stepping down after nearly seven years at the helm to take on a new product creation role at the company.
The move comes alongside a Meta-led $900 million funding round for Indian fintech giant CRED, structured through a combination of primary and secondary equity purchases. The deal will make Meta a minority investor in CRED, which said Shah will step down as CEO while retaining his personal stake.
India is WhatsApp’s largest market, with more than 500 million users, accounting for a significant share of the app’s global base of over 3 billion people. The country has also emerged as a key battleground for Meta’s ambitions in business messaging and digital payments, areas seen as critical to WhatsApp’s next phase of growth.
Cathcart, who has led WhatsApp since 2019, oversaw a period of rapid expansion that helped the service become one of the world’s most popular messaging apps, 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, channels and AI integrations, while deepening the focus on business messaging.
But WhatsApp’s efforts to push into digital payments have had mixed results. While WhatsApp Pay gained traction in India, the service struggled to replicate the scale and engagement achieved by local rivals such as PhonePe and Google Pay, leaving significant room for growth in one of the world’s largest payments markets.
Meta is betting that Shah’s experience building a consumer internet business in India can help unlock WhatsApp’s next phase of growth.
In a statement, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said Shah had built CRED into “one of India’s most important technology companies” and brought the “builder mentality and global perspective” needed to run the world’s largest messaging app.
The appointment comes as Meta looks to expand WhatsApp’s business beyond messaging, particularly 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, after previously building FreeCharge, one of India’s early digital payment startups. In addition to his operational roles, Shah has become one of India’s most prominent startup investors, backing more than 250 companies and serving in advisory and industry leadership positions across the country’s technology and financial services sectors.
Meta’s investment values ​​CRED at about $4.5 billion on a post-money basis. The startup was last valued at around $3.6 billion in a funding round in May 2025, which is below its peak valuation of $6.4 billion in 2022. Before its Series F round, the company had raised more than $1 billion from investors.
As part of the transition, Miten Sampat, who has been in charge of strategy and finance at CRED since 2020, will take over as 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 management team were working on a long-term management structure as the company prepares for a possible initial public offering, with the fresh capital expected to support growth across its payments, lending, insurance and wealth businesses.
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