Kunal Shah heads to Meta; New-age IPO playbook

Happy Tuesday! Kunal Shah has taken over as WhatsApp's chief, while Meta backs Cred in a major funding deal. This and more in today’s ETtech Morning Dispatch.

Also in the letter:
■ UPI mandates unified
■ Next ECMS winners
■ Tokenmaxxing under scrutiny

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Kunal Shah, founder, Cred

Cred has a new backer and a new chapter. On Monday, Meta said it will invest Rs 8,550 crore (around $900 million) in the credit-payments firm in one of the largest financing deals for an Indian fintech.

Deal details:

• Founder Kunal Shah is leaving Cred to lead WhatsApp globally.
• The deal includes $400 million in secondary stake sales and $500 million in primary capital.
• Meta is also throwing in $100 million in ad credits.
• Shah retains his personal stake in Cred while long-time lieutenants step up: Miten Sampat takes over as interim CEO.

Money matters:

• The transaction values Cred at Rs 43,239 crore (roughly $4.5 billion) post-money.
• Meta joins Cred’s cap table as a minority investor with a < 20% stake – and no access to customer data.
• Shah remains the largest individual shareholder in Cred, though his holding has dipped below 20%.
• Cred last raised Rs 617 crore in June 2025, at a $3.5 billion valuation– a 45% cut from its $6.4 billion peak in 2022.

Also Read: 'Kunal was the clear choice': Meta's Chris Cox on WhatsApp leadership change

From the horse's mouth: In a post on X, Shah said Cred is ready for its next phase. "I am stepping back and @miten steps in as interim CEO, partnered with an incredibly talented team. He has been heading strategy and finance and suffering me since 2020. I’m stepping away from the operating role and will continue as a shareholder. My commitment doesn’t change. Just the role," he wrote.

Also Read: Meet Kunal Shah, serial entrepreneur and Meta's pick to lead WhatsApp

Yes, and: Will Cathcart, who headed WhatsApp for seven years, is stepping down. "WhatsApp is in the strongest position it's ever been — and that felt like the right moment to step back," he wrote on social media.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg confirmed that Cathcart will move into a new role within Meta and introduced Shah as WhatsApp’s next chief.

Also Read: Who is Will Cathcart? WhatsApp leader exits after steering it through privacy battles, monetisation push

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India’s young, loss-making startups are rewriting the IPO script. They’re heading to public markets with smaller exit windows for existing shareholders – and bigger asks for growth capital. Investors, burned by frothy 2021 listings, now want IPO money to fuel scale and profitability, not just early exits.

Zepto’s proposed Rs 8,010-crore fresh issue is the latest example. The quick commerce firm joins Ola Electric, PhysicsWallah, and Curefoods in positioning its IPO as growth capital rather than a cash-out event.

Smaller exits, bigger growth ask

• An ET analysis of 40-plus venture-backed and new-age companies shows that seven of ten new-age IPOs in 2021-22 had offer-for-sale (OFS) components above 50%, with a median OFS share around 80%.
• The newer loss-making cohort is tilting heavily towards fresh issues, signalling that proceeds will go into expansion, scale, and a path to profitability.
• Early investors are also staying patient. These companies are still young: the real exit story, they hope, lies ahead.

What changed from 2021:

• Public investors are no longer shunning loss-making startups outright, but they now frown on large exits from firms still burning cash.
• Bigger OFS components still fly for scaled, profitable platforms like Groww, Lenskart and Urban Company.
• The new market test is now sharper: public market will fund growth – but only with valuation discipline and a credible profitability roadmap.

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The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) wants to bring order to UPI’s subscription sprawl. To this end, it is building a feature that will let users see all their UPI e-mandates across third-party payment applications (TPAPs) in one place.

Driving the news: Two senior executives at digital payments firms told us NPCI is developing an application programming interface (API) that all UPI apps can plug into. The catch? Users will still need to visit the original app where a mandate was created to modify or cancel it.

Quote, unquote: “The feature is such that all apps will show the list of mandates, but for a transaction, they will be redirected to the parent UPI app,” said one of the executives.

Background: UPI AutoPay is growing rapidly. NPCI data shows the top 10 banks processed around 1.6 billion e-mandate transactions in May, up from 577 million a year earlier.

But the growth hides a problem: decline rates remain high. At State Bank of India (SBI), the largest remitter bank, only around 30% of such transactions are approved. Roughly, 70% fail, mainly because of insufficient balances and other frictions.

Also Read: One soundbox soon for all payment apps as NPCI readies platform

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Next batch of ECMS investments may be unveiled next month: The government is likely to announce the next tranche of beneficiaries under the Electronic Component Manufacturing Scheme (ECMS) by next month, according to officials. The focus will be on units that make the upstream components India needs in its supply chain, as well as on high-precision capital equipment, they said.

As AI adoption grows, token consumption comes under close scrutiny: The "tokenmaxxing" trend is drawing scrutiny from auditors and risk officers. They’re now probing not just how many tokens companies use, but how – and where – those tokens are actually being consumed.

Info Edge says it invested Rs 1,003 crore on AI, deeptech startups since 2020: Info Edge, the parent company of Naukri, has invested Rs 1,003 crore across 54 artificial intelligence (AI) and deeptech startups since 2020, as the early backer of Zomato and Policybazaar sharpens its focus on newer technology bets, according to a shareholder letter released on Monday.

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