“It’s been a minute”, said Kunal Shah as he listed the highlights of his journey with CRED, a fintech platform he built from scratch. He is now set to take a step away from the business and take over as the global head of WhatsApp, marking a significant leadership transition of one of the largest consumer platforms.

As part of the deal that elevates Mr. Shah to the top role, Meta, the parent company of WhatsApp, will invest $900 million (about ₹8,550 crore) in the company, making it a minority investor in CRED. Both CRED and Mr. Shah have reiterated that Meta will not receive access to customer data. While Mr. Shah will no longer be part of the operations, he will continue as a shareholder in the CRED.

A philosophy graduate, Mr. Shah began working at the age of 15 and juggled a job while pursuing his undergraduate degree. Before building CRED, Mr. Shah founded PaisaBack, a small SaaS company focused on cash backs and promotional discount campaigns for retailers in 2009, and later pivoted to FreeCharge, a digital payments platform. In 2018, the platform was acquired by online marketplace Snapdeal and the deal was reported to be in the range of around $400 million. At the time, it was the largest M&A in the Indian startup ecosystem.

“FreeCharge is at the forefront of the mobile commerce revolution, which is taking place in India right now. We have been ahead of the curve and as a result, 85% of our transactions originate from mobile; these transactions have very high repeat customer behaviour,” Mr. Shah had said.

With Mr. Shah at its helm, CRED is among the largest consumer fintech companies with almost 17 million users in India. The Bengaluru-headquartered company began as a platform that allowed users to make credit card payments and earn rewards but has since expanded its suite of services to include lending, payments and other products.

Its popularity surged on the back of its quirky and well-designed marketing campaigns. Its advertisements had yesteryear celebrities, doing activities opposite to their public personas (who can forget Rahul Dravid’s 30 seconds of rage) while keeping the messaging simple and to the point. The company managed to break the clutter and create a conversation around paying credit card bills. It has had the steady backing of investors despite questions on how exactly CRED makes money and profitability.

Mr. Shah joins a league of Indian-origin leaders who are at the helm of some of the biggest tech companies in the world. He had earlier credited the success of these leaders to a robust work ethic shaped by the need to prove themselves. He is an adviser, investor and has backed several startups. He also came up with the delta four theory, a framework to evaluate startup ideas.

The WhatsApp story

India is very vital for WhatsApp, as its largest market with over 500 million active users. While under the outgoing head Will Cathcart, the company scaled new heights and pushed new products, its monetisation efforts have faced an uphill battle. The company has not managed to gain a lot of ground with WhatsApp Pay and faces stiff competition from GooglePay and PhonePe which dominate the market, accounting for almost 79% of UPI share.

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Here is where Mr. Shah and CRED matter to Meta. The global giant is betting big on Mr. Shah’s experience in building his platform to guide WhatsApp through its next phase. Emphasising that Mr. Shah built CRED into one of India’s most important technology companies, Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that he brings “builder mentality and global perspective”.

“While it’s [WhatsApp has] come very far, the delta between WhatsApp today and its full potential is massive,” Mr. Shah said. Looking forward to working with Meta leadership, he added.