WhatsApp gets new chief as Meta taps India’s CRED founder Kunal Shah, and invests $900M in startup

Meta is betting on India for WhatsApp’s next chapter, naming entrepreneur Kunal Shah to lead the messaging app and succeed Will Cathcart, who is stepping down after nearly seven years at the helm to take on a new product-building role at the company. The move comes alongside a Meta-led $900 million financing for Indian fintech giant CRED , structured through a combination of primary and secondary share purchases. The deal will make Meta a minority investor in the CRED, which said Shah will step down as chief executive while retaining his personal shareholding. 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 three 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 its focus on business messaging. But efforts by WhatsApp to push into digital payments have delivered mixed results. …