WhatsApp’s boss of nearly seven years is stepping back, handing control of the world’s most popular messaging app to an Indian start-up founder who built his career far from Silicon Valley.
Will Cathcart, who oversaw WhatsApp’s growth to more than three billion users worldwide, said in social media posts on Monday that while the platform was in “the strongest position it’s ever been” it also “felt like the right moment to step back”. He will remain within Meta’s leadership ranks.
“Kunal Shah, founder of fintech Cred, becomes WhatsApp head after Will Cathcart steps back.”
Taking his place is Kunal Shah, the founder of Cred, an Indian fintech company that rewards high-earners for paying credit card bills on time. Meta invested $900m (£679m) in Cred, giving it a 20% stake, according to Bloomberg. Shah said Meta would have “no access to member data”.
“Kunal has built one of India’s most important technology companies,” Mark Zuckerberg said. “He brings the kind of builder mentality and global perspective that will serve him well in running the world’s biggest messaging app.”
The appointment marks a rare ascent for a founder who built his career inside India’s startup ecosystem. Shah, raised in Mumbai, studied philosophy in college – a choice he later said was driven partly by the fact that morning classes allowed him to keep working after his family’s business ran into trouble. His first big success was FreeCharge, a mobile recharge platform co-founded in 2010 and sold to Snapdeal in 2015 in one of India’s largest startup acquisitions at the time.
After leaving FreeCharge, Shah spent years investing in young tech firms and advising founders through Y Combinator and Sequoia Capital. He founded Cred in 2018, linking its origins to questions of trust and incentives.
The leadership shake‑up comes as Meta looks to strengthen WhatsApp’s already booming presence in India, where the app has about 853 million users, according to World Population Review. But WhatsApp has also faced recent scrutiny in the country over its privacy and data-sharing practices with Meta.
Shah wrote on Monday that he would continue as a shareholder in Cred while taking on the new role. The question now is how his builder mentality will reshape an app that Zuckerberg wants to become “the best service for billions of people and millions of businesses” – and whether he can navigate the regulatory heat that comes with it.