Will Cathcart is out as head of WhatsApp after seven years, and Meta is bringing in Kunal Shah, the founder of Indian fintech startup Cred, to replace him.
Zuckerberg made the announcement on Monday, framing Shah as someone with a “builder mentality and global perspective.” Shah founded Cred in 2018 in Bengaluru, and the platform works by rewarding high-earners who pay their credit card bills on time. It has grown into one of India’s more notable fintech companies.
To sweeten the deal, Meta is investing $900 million into Cred, which gives it a 20% minority stake in the startup. Cred is now valued at $4.5 billion. Shah clarified that despite the investment, Meta will have no access to Cred’s member data.
Cathcart, for his part, says WhatsApp is “in the strongest position it’s ever been” and that this felt like the right moment to step back. He is not leaving Meta entirely and will move into a new internal role focused on building new products.
During his tenure as WhatsApp chief, Will Cathcart oversaw several major updates, including encrypted chat backups in 2021, the launch of WhatsApp on iPad, the introduction of ads, and private AI chats.
Today, WhatsApp has more than 3 billion monthly active users worldwide, with about 853 million of them in India.
The leadership change makes sense given where Meta wants to take WhatsApp next. India is the app’s biggest market, and Meta has been pushing hard to turn WhatsApp into a revenue generator through ads, paid subscriptions, and AI tools.
Shah, who has spent years building a fintech product deeply embedded in India’s payments culture, is presumably meant to accelerate that.
Meta acquired WhatsApp back in 2014 for $19 billion. It took over a decade, but the company is now actively trying to make it profitable.
