WhatsApp’s paid messaging business has passed a $2 billion annual run rate, and Meta has now put Kunal Shah in charge of the whole app.
Shah, the founder of Cred, announced the move on Monday in a social media post. He is leaving his operating role at the Indian fintech company to lead WhatsApp globally. “I’m stepping away from the operating role and will continue as a shareholder,” he wrote. “My commitment doesn’t change. Just the role.”
Miten Sampat, who has run strategy and finance at Cred and has worked with Shah since 2020, becomes interim chief executive.
Why Meta chose him
Chris Cox, Meta’s chief product officer, was asked what drew the company to Shah. Mint reported that his answer pointed to a leader who knows how people use the app each day and where its next openings lie. Ads and subscriptions are growing in importance for WhatsApp, the paper noted.
Shah will keep working largely from Bengaluru. His handover to Meta begins with trips to the company’s Menlo Park headquarters.
On what lies ahead, Shah was blunt about the size of the opening. “While it’s come very far, the delta between WhatsApp today and its full potential is massive,” he said.
The Cred money
The appointment arrives alongside capital. Meta is putting $900 million into Cred, in a mix of primary and secondary purchases, at a valuation of $4.5 billion. Shah said Meta joins as a minority investor and gets no access to member data.
The company is also announcing its fifth employee stock ownership plan buyback, he added.
Shah laid out Cred’s record in the same post. After leaving FreeCharge, where he worked between 2015 and 2018, he started Cred with $1 million of his own money, aiming to reward people for paying credit card bills on time. Between 2019 and 2025, he said, membership went from zero to 17 million and the company raised more than $900 million from global investors. Annual revenue reached around $325 million, or approximately Rs 3,200 crore, spread across payments, lending, insurance, commerce, wealth and credit cards.
Cred posted its first profitable quarter in 2026, according to Shah.
The balancing act
Mint framed the open question for Shah as whether he can turn WhatsApp into a multi-utility platform without damaging the trust that made it indispensable. Meta’s stake in Cred also strengthens its position in India’s fast-growing digital payments ecosystem, the paper wrote, and it asked whether the deal means Meta sees India as more than a market.
It did not offer a firm answer. It said only, “Perhaps.”
Sources
- Mint TOTM: With Kunal Shah, WhatsApp gets some India cred | Mint
- Meta taps Indian startup founder to solve revenue puzzle
