Meta Platforms Inc is investing $900 million into Indian fintech startup Cred, and announced to appoint its founder, Kunal Shah, the new leader of WhatsApp.
Shah will replace the current head of WhatsApp, Will Cathcart, who has been running the popular messaging service for roughly seven years. He will step away from his current role at Cred.
Cathcart, who saw WhatsApp’s user base more than double in size during his tenure, is staying at Meta but will step into a new role using artificial intelligence tools to develop consumer apps and products, Bloomberg reported.
Kunal Shah was recruited by Meta’s Chief Product Officer Chris Cox, who was seeking an entrepreneur from a country where WhatsApp already has a strong foothold.
Cox called Shah “one of India’s most respected entrepreneurs, a serious thinker, and a deeply good person”, according to a statement shared by a Meta spokesperson. Shah currently lives in Bengaluru, but will relocate to the Bay Area in the US to work out of Meta’s Menlo Park, California, headquarters.
“Kunal brings a deep understanding of how WhatsApp is woven into people’s daily lives, alongside a fresh perspective from outside Meta and the founder mentality that built WhatsApp in the first place,” read a statement by Meta announcing the move.
It described him as “one of India’s most respected entrepreneurs” who has record of “building products that people love at scale”.
Investment route to recruit
The Cred investment gives Meta a roughly 20% stake in Cred, which operates an app that rewards customers for paying their credit card bills on time. The company is now valued at $4.5 billion post-money, according to a press release.
The investment represents a new chapter for WhatsApp, which is one of the world’s largest messaging platforms. The app has grown considerably in recent years, surpassing 3 billion monthly users in 2025, though it’s still early in developing several new business lines, including advertising and subscriptions.
Building out those revenue streams, as well as integrating AI agents into WhatsApp, will now fall to Shah, Cred’s 47-year-old founder.
Meta has employed this investment-recruitment strategy before to fill out key leadership roles within the company. Last year, the company invested over $14 billion into Scale AI and recruited its founder, Alexandr Wang, to take over Meta’s newly created AI lab.
“Kunal built Cred into one of India’s most important technology companies, and he brings the kind of builder mentality and global perspective that will serve him well in running the world’s biggest massaging app,” Meta Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg wrote in a post.
“Chris Cox approached Kunal directly while looking for a leader who grasps the global product opportunity for WhatsApp and can represent the needs of the people who rely on it every single day. A prolific writer and commentator, Kunal has long held strong views about how WhatsApp can become even more useful in people’s lives,” the Meta statement added.
What Kunal Shah said
The statement quoted Kunal Shah as saying: “While it’s come very far, the delta between WhatsApp today and its full potential is massive. I look forward to working with Mark, Chris, and the leadership across Meta for the next step in WhatsApp’s journey.”
On stepping away from Cred, he said as per a company statement: “I started CRED in 2018 with a belief that creditworthiness deserves to be rewarded. In under eight years, that belief has turned into a new category: millions of members, ~ ₹3,200 crore (~US $325M) in revenue, profitability, a full stack of licences and a strong brand. On this foundation, with additional capital and an extraordinarily talented team, CRED is poised to become an enduring institution for decades to come. I’m stepping back with gratitude and with conviction that the team will keep raising the bar.”
Meta’s India focus
Meta has made several investments in India over the past few years, one of its most important markets and a major hub for WhatsApp. The social media giant invested $5.7 billion into Jio Platforms in 2020, taking a 10% stake in the company as part of a push to help increase commerce on WhatsApp. It also announced a deal earlier this month to lease its first AI data center in India.
Founded in 2018, Cred offers consumers perks and rewards tied to their credit card repayments. Its app, which has 17 million monthly users, can also analyze and track spending, according to its website. The company raised $75 million last year in a Series G funding round led by Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund GIC, according to IBS Intelligence.
As part of its investment, Meta will provide both primary and secondary capital, according to the press release, meaning it will purchase shares from some of Cred’s existing investors.
What happens at Cred next
Shah will join Meta full-time, stepping away from Cred, though he will remain a shareholder. Miten Sampat, an executive leading company strategy, will take over as interim CEO while the board reviews Cred’s leadership structure with an eye toward an “eventual IPO,” the press release said.
Meta is not taking a board seat and will not receive access to Cred customer information, according to the Indian company.
Miten Sampat, the interim CEO of CRED, said 1.7 crore creditworthy Indians trust CRED with improving their relationship with money. “We have a generational opportunity to build on Kunal’s vision and compound consistently towards becoming a public company. I’m excited to take CRED forward in its next chapter. We are just getting started.”
(Bloomberg inputs)
