Cred founder Kunal Shah was approached for advice on WhatsApp's next leader. But by the end of the call, Meta's product chief was asking if he'd take the job himself. Here's how it all went down.

Meta's decision to hand global leadership of WhatsApp to Kunal Shah, the Cred founder and one of India's most prominent angel investors, began not as a recruitment pitch but as an information-gathering exercise, according to a Bloomberg report.

The cold outreach

Meta Chief Product Officer Chris Cox reached out to Shah directly in the spring, seeking his advice on picking the future leader of WhatsApp. Cox had been calling entrepreneurs and investors in markets such as India, Brazil and Mexico, where WhatsApp is a dominant part of business and culture, as part of a broader effort to understand what qualities the platform's next chief should have.

According to Bloomberg, the goal of these conversations was to gather ideas about the future of the platform and identify what qualities the next WhatsApp leader should possess. Shah's responses, however, stood out immediately.