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By:

Kiran D. Tare

21 August 2024 at 11:23:13 am

From Mumbai to Meta

Kunal Shah’s rise from city entrepreneur to global head of WhatsApp signals that India is producing genuine architects of the digital age. For much of the internet era, the world’s defining digital products were imagined in California. The next chapter looks markedly different. Artificial intelligence, digital finance and ubiquitous connectivity have flattened the distance between Silicon Valley and the rest of the world. Increasingly, the most interesting ideas are emerging not merely from...

From Mumbai to Meta

Kunal Shah’s rise from city entrepreneur to global head of WhatsApp signals that India is producing genuine architects of the digital age. For much of the internet era, the world’s defining digital products were imagined in California. The next chapter looks markedly different. Artificial intelligence, digital finance and ubiquitous connectivity have flattened the distance between Silicon Valley and the rest of the world. Increasingly, the most interesting ideas are emerging not merely from American technology giants but other countries. Few people embody that transition better than Kunal Shah. His recent appointment as the global head of WhatsApp, following Meta’s $900 million investment in CRED, represents the arrival of an Indian entrepreneur at the helm of one of the world’s most consequential digital platforms. Unlike many celebrated founders whose credentials begin with engineering degrees, Shah’s intellectual roots lie elsewhere. A graduate in philosophy from Mumbai’s Wilson College, he briefly enrolled for an MBA. However, rather than collecting qualifications, he accumulated ideas, ranging effortlessly across economics, psychology, incentives and consumer behaviour. His social-media essays and public lectures have acquired an almost cult following among entrepreneurs because they treat business less as accounting than as applied anthropology. His entrepreneurial journey mirrors India’s own digital awakening. Long before smartphones transformed everyday commerce, Shah recognised that friction was the enemy of adoption. His first venture, FreeCharge, helped familiarise millions of Indians with digital payments during a period when cash remained king. Its success made him one of the pioneers of India’s fintech revolution. Following its sale, Shah resisted the temptation to launch another fashionable startup immediately. Instead, he spent years investing in young companies, observing founders and dissecting consumer behaviour with the patience of an academic. That unusually reflective interlude shaped CRED, the company he founded in 2018 around a deceptively simple proposition that trust should carry economic value. Many regarded the idea as eccentric. Why reward consumers merely for paying their credit-card bills on time? But Shah saw something deeper. Modern economies increasingly depend upon trust and reputation. CRED transformed disciplined financial behaviour into a platform that eventually expanded into lending, commerce, insurance, wealth management and payments. Today the company serves around 17 million monthly active members, and has attracted more than $900 million from global investors. It generates annual revenues of roughly $325 million. Importantly, these figures signify that patient product thinking can triumph over fashionable exuberance. Shah’s influence extends well beyond the companies he has founded. He has become perhaps India’s most prolific angel investor, backing more than 250 startups while mentoring hundreds of entrepreneurs. His counsel has shaped businesses across sectors, while advisory roles with Peak XV Partners, Pine Labs and industry bodies have given him an outsized influence over the direction of India’s startup ecosystem. Shah has consistently argued that enduring businesses are built not on funding rounds but on understanding incentives, habits and human psychology. Those qualities explain why Meta came calling. Mark Zuckerberg praised Shah’s “builder mentality” while Meta’s Chief Product Officer, Chris Cox, highlighted his grasp of how WhatsApp fits into people’s everyday lives. That endorsement recognises that the future of messaging lies increasingly beyond messaging itself. Artificial intelligence, digital payments, commerce and business communication are converging into a single ecosystem. Few executives possess practical experience across all four domains. India offers perhaps the clearest glimpse of that future. It is WhatsApp’s largest market, its most sophisticated laboratory for business messaging and an increasingly important arena for digital payments. Shah understands this ecosystem instinctively because he helped build it. His career has unfolded alongside India’s digital public infrastructure, the smartphone revolution and the emergence of one of the world's most dynamic entrepreneurial cultures. There is something symbolically satisfying about the appointment. While technology has long celebrated engineers who solve computational problems, Shah belongs to a different tradition of the entrepreneur who begins by asking why people behave as they do. His greatest strength lies in understanding incentives, trust and networks. History suggests that the most transformative technology leaders are rarely prisoners of technology alone. They are students of people. In elevating Kunal Shah to lead WhatsApp, Meta is betting that the next era of the internet will be shaped less by algorithms than by a deeper understanding of the billions of human beings who use them. Judging by Shah’s career so far, that is a wager with every chance of paying handsome dividends.

Hard Bargain

The proposed India-US trade agreement has now become a test of whether India can convert a turbulent global trading order into a lasting strategic and economic advantage. For decades, trade negotiations largely revolved around a familiar arithmetic of reducing tariffs and expanding market access. That comfortable world has vanished. The United States led by Donald Trump increasingly treats trade as an instrument of geopolitical leverage.


As a result, Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal has insisted that India will proceed only if Washington’s new tariff architecture leaves Indian exporters better placed than competitors such as Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and, above all, China.


When negotiators had reached broad agreement in February, the expectation was that punitive American tariffs on Indian goods would fall substantially, giving Indian manufacturers a meaningful advantage. However, subsequent legal challenges to Trump’s reciprocal tariffs forced Washington to redesign its trade policy. New tariff mechanisms under Section 301 of the US Trade Act are now expected to replace the earlier framework. Naturally, India wants to know where it stands before committing itself.


From Barack Obama through Joe Biden to Donald Trump, successive administrations have increasingly abandoned the old consensus favouring unrestricted free trade. Industrial revival and strategic competition with China have replaced economic liberalism as Washington’s priorities. Tariffs have become tools of foreign policy.


India’s insistence on securing preferential treatment reflects lessons learnt over the past three decades. Since the liberalisation of 1991, India has often entered trade agreements hoping that market access alone would guarantee export growth. Yet countries such as Vietnam used preferential tariff access to build manufacturing ecosystems that increasingly displaced Indian exporters. If a future American tariff regime treats India no differently from its regional competitors, the economic rationale for the agreement diminishes considerably.


The stakes are substantial. The United States today absorbs nearly one-fifth of India’s exports, double its share fifteen years ago, and remains the only major trading partner with whom India enjoys a significant merchandise trade surplus. That surplus has already narrowed sharply under recent American tariff measures. The agreement must therefore preserve India’s export competitiveness rather than merely celebrate diplomatic symbolism.


Washington seeks greater access for American agriculture, dairy products and advanced technology. Here lie the toughest compromises. Indian farmers fear subsidised American imports would undermine domestic livelihoods, while policymakers worry that higher technology imports could widen trade imbalances.


American companies increasingly view India as the most credible alternative to excessive dependence on China. India, meanwhile, requires greater investment, stronger manufacturing capacity and reliable access to global markets if it is to sustain rapid economic growth.


Trade agreements succeed not because they eliminate every difference but because they create enduring mutual advantage. India is therefore right to bargain hard. A deal that secures competitive market access while protecting India’s core economic interests would represent a strategic investment in the country’s long-term economic future.

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