After nearly seven years at the helm of Meta’s globally dominant messaging platform WhatsApp, Will Cathcart has announced his departure from the top role, in one of the most high-profile leadership changes in Big Tech in recent months. During Cathcart’s tenure, WhatsApp expanded exponentially, growing its global user base of private messaging to over 3 billion people, while rolling out new encrypted communication features that cemented its position as the world’s most widely used mobile messaging service. In social media posts shared Monday, Cathcart noted that WhatsApp is currently in the strongest strategic position in its history, making the timing right for him to step back from day-to-day leadership of the platform. While Cathcart will leave his role as WhatsApp head, he will remain a member of Meta’s senior leadership team. Taking his place is Kunal Shah, the founder of Bangalore-based Indian fintech unicorn Cred, a fintech firm that has shaken up India’s credit and payments sector since its launch. Meta chief executive officer and Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg voiced strong public support for Shah’s appointment this week. Zuckerberg highlighted that Shah built Cred into one of India’s most consequential technology companies, and said his builder-focused mindset and global outlook make him uniquely suited to lead the world’s largest messaging platform. “I look forward to working with Kunal to continue to make WhatsApp the best service for billions of people and millions of businesses,” Zuckerberg said. Shah founded Cred in 2018, building a members-only fintech platform that rewards users for making on-time credit card payments, with a core focus on high-income users in India’s fast-growing digital economy. Before launching Cred, Shah built a career as an investor and advisor to early-stage startups across India and Southeast Asia, according to his public LinkedIn profile. In his own announcement shared on social media Monday, Shah confirmed he will retain his stake as a shareholder in Cred while taking on the WhatsApp leadership role. He also revealed that Cred has secured $900 million (approximately £679 million) in new investment from Meta, a deal that Bloomberg reports will give Meta a 20% minority stake in the fintech firm. To address growing privacy concerns that have dogged Meta in key emerging markets, Shah emphasized that while Meta will hold a minority stake in Cred, the social media giant will not gain access to any of Cred’s member user data. The leadership reshuffle at WhatsApp comes as Meta works to deepen its foothold in India, WhatsApp’s largest single market by user count. Data from the World Population Review shows that WhatsApp counts roughly 853 million active users in India alone, accounting for more than a quarter of the platform’s total global user base. As part of Meta’s broader “family of apps” that also includes Facebook, Instagram, and Messenger, the company has increasingly looked to WhatsApp to drive new revenue growth, testing new revenue streams including in-app advertisements, paid premium subscription features, and artificial intelligence-powered tools. Despite its massive popularity in the country, WhatsApp and Meta have faced growing regulatory and public scrutiny in India in recent years over the platform’s privacy policies and data sharing arrangements between the app and its parent company. The leadership change and Meta’s new investment in Cred signals the company’s long-term bet on solidifying its position in the world’s largest open digital market, as competition for users and revenue in emerging technology sectors intensifies across South Asia.