Renowned Indian Entrepreneur Named As WhatsApp CEO

In what could be a proud moment for the Indian community across the globe, renowned entrepreneur and founder of globally popular Fintech platform CRED, Kunal Shah has now been named as the CEO of WhatsApp.

Kunal Shah now joins the elite list of Indian origin individuals leading some of the most influential corporations and international organizations like Satya Nadella ( Microsoft CEO) and Sundar Pichai ( Google CEO).

The big development comes in the wake of a huge deal between CRED and Meta. As per reports, Meta has announced an investment of $900 million (around ₹8,550 crore) into the Indian fintech startup CRED as part of its Series H funding round. Alongside the massive investment, CRED’s founder, Kunal Shah, is stepping down from his day-to-day role to become the new global head of WhatsApp.

Shah will succeed Will Cathcart, who is moving to a new position within Meta to focus on artificial intelligence (AI) initiatives after leading the messaging app for seven years.

Also, Meta is said to be acquiring a minority stake of approximately 20% in CRED through a mix of primary and secondary share purchases. This values CRED at $4.5 billion (around ₹43,239 crore).

Coming to Kunal Shah, he founded the digital payments platform FreeCharge in 2010 (later acquired by Snapdeal in 2015 for roughly $450 million) and then launched the rewards-based fintech platform CRED in 2018, which turned out to be a big success. He holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Philosophy from Mumbai’s Wilson College