When Meta’s chief product officer Chris Cox reached out to Cred founder Kunal Shah, he was seeking a leader who understood daily user habits while also being capable of —a critical task, given that India is the platform’s largest market.
Cox described Shah as “a prolific writer and commentator” with strong, long-held views about how WhatsApp can become even more useful in people’s lives. As he takes over the messaging app as its global CEO, Shah is tasked with taking the app to its “full potential” and navigating ad rollouts and monetization.
“WhatsApp recognizes that India is its biggest market globally, so there is a great chance for Meta to build commercially monetizable products in India and take them to the rest of the world. Kunal’s role is a testament to that,” said an executive privy to the developments.
Shah will continue to be based out of Bengaluru, at least for the near future, this person added. “Though he will travel to Meta’s Menlo Park headquarters in the next few weeks for his leadership transition, he will mostly run WhatsApp’s global operations from India itself,” the person said, without completely ruling out a permanent move. Shah, Cred and Meta were yet to respond to Mint’s queries at the time of publishing.
The $4.5 billion test lab
‘s aggressive expansion in India is highlighted by its landmark $900 million ( ₹8,550 crore) investment in Cred, valuing the fintech firm at $4.5 billion. By acquiring this 20% stake alongside Shah’s appointment, Meta gains a strategic foothold in two of India’s top 10 UPI service providers, a space currently dominated by PhonePe and Google Pay.
About $400 million of this consists of a secondary share sale, allowing existing investors like Peak XV and Tiger Global to book returns. The remaining $500 million, comprising primary capital, will be injected into Cred to accelerate its growth plans.
For Meta, Shah’s track record of building Cred into a financial powerhouse offers the exact blueprint it needs to transform WhatsApp from a messaging app into a monetized, multi-utility platform. The stakes are mutual: both ecosystems rely heavily on scaling user trust and deep merchant partnerships.
Shah’s move lets him pressure-test his high-engagement fintech strategies on a global scale, while Cred secures a massive corporate backer in Meta. Cred’s deep integration into the premium consumer economy—it processes over 40% of India’s credit card bills and manages a lending business with $2.5 billion of assets under management for 17 million monthly active users—now becomes the ultimate sandbox for WhatsApp’s commercial ambitions.
Monetizing WhatsApp
The development comes at an important time for the Big Tech firm as it looks to further scale its paid messaging within WhatsApp. Meta’s family of apps (FoA), which also includes Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and Threads, saw March-quarter revenue rise 33% to $55.91 billion. Within this, FoA’s ‘other revenue’ was up 74% at $885 million, driven primarily by WhatsApp paid messaging and subscriptions revenue, with the rest coming from advertising.
An analysis of Meta’s recent earnings call transcripts showed that WhatsApp’s paid messaging business crossed a $2 billion annual run rate in the quarter ended December 2025. The platform is also seeing strong momentum with its new status ads, which are now viewed by hundreds of millions of people daily.
However, management also highlighted that it expects WhatsApp Status ads to command lower average prices than Facebook or Instagram ads for the foreseeable future. This discount is largely due to WhatsApp’s heavy user base in lower-monetizing markets and the more limited user data available for ad targeting.
Cred’s valuation reset
Even as he transitions into his new global role and moves out of active management at Cred, Shah continues to hold a combined stake of just under 20% in the company, split between his direct shares and QED Innovation Labs, his personal investment vehicle. For context, Shah held a 11.46% stake while QED’s holding stood at 10.057% before the Meta investment. Post the capital infusion, Cred’s founder will now hold a 9.82% stake with QED at 8.6%, a person familiar with the matter said.
Since its inception, Cred has raised nearly $1 billion from marquee global investors such as Tiger Global, GIC, and Ribbit Capital. The company continues to navigate its path to profitability. Operating revenues jumped 70% to ₹2,397 crore in FY24, though losses widened to ₹1,646 crore. For FY25 the company reported a revenue increase to ₹2,735 crore, with operating losses narrowing significantly to ₹298 crore. Its audited financials for FY25 and FY26 have not yet been filed.
The Meta deal marks a steep valuation reset from Cred’s pandemic-era peak, when it raised capital from GIC and others at a $6.4 billion valuation in 2022. It made multiple attempts to raise funds before it closed a $72 million internal down round led by GIC in May last year which pegged the company’s fair market value at $3.5 billion.
In December, the company undertook an internal exercise that pegged Cred’s fair value at $1.2 billion, filings showed. However, the valuation report is merely a compliance document that sets the floor price, representing the minimum entry point of buying shares in the company and does not reflect how investors value it, a top industry executive said on the condition of anonymity.
Meta’s entry at $4.5 billion represents a modest uptick over the internal baseline—all without securing a board seat. The pressure now shifts to interim CEO Miten Sampat, who must aggressively scale growth, capture market share, and bridge the gap to profitability to justify Meta’s generous valuation.