Meta is betting on India for WhatsApp’s next chapter, naming entrepreneur Kunal Shah to lead the messaging app and succeed Will Cathcart, who will step down after nearly seven years at the helm to take on a new product development role at the company.
The measure is added to a financing of 900 million dollars led by Meta to Indian fintech giant CREDstructured through a combination of primary and secondary share purchases. The deal will make Meta a minority investor in CRED, which said Shah will step down as CEO but retain his personal stake.
India is WhatsApp’s largest market, with more than 500 million users represents a significant portion of the app’s global base of more than three billion people. The country has also become a key battleground for Meta’s ambitions in enterprise messaging and digital payments, areas considered critical for 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 most popular messaging apps in the world, including 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 integrationswhile deepening its focus on enterprise messaging.
But WhatsApp’s efforts to boost digital payments have yielded mixed results. While WhatsApp pays gained strength in Indiathe service fought 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 company 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 largest technology companies” and brought the “builder mentality 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, particularly in areas such as payments, commerce and enterprise communications. India, as WhatsApp’s largest market, has been critical to those efforts.
In 2018, Shah founded CRED, a fintech platform with 17 million monthly active users, after having created FreeCharge, one of India’s first digital payments startups. Beyond his operational roles, he has become one of India’s most prominent emerging investors, backing more than 250 companies and holding advisory and industry leadership roles in the country’s technology and financial services sectors.
Meta’s investment values CRED at around $4.5 billion after money. The startup was last valued at about $3.6 billion in a funding round in May 2025, below its maximum valuation of $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 CRED’s strategy and finances since 2020, will take on 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 were working on a longer-term management structure as the company prepares for an eventual initial public offering, with the fresh capital expected to support growth in its payments, lending, insurance and wealth businesses.
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