Business
Kunal Shah: The Indian entrepreneur taking charge of WhatsApp
Until recently, Kunal Shah was a familiar name mainly within India’s startup and investor circles.
The founder of fintech company Cred had steadily built a following beyond the businesses he created. His podcast appearances often ventured into topics such as trust, incentives, wealth creation and human behaviour. His social media posts ranged from artificial intelligence to philosophy.
Now, with Meta appointing him to lead WhatsApp, he has been propelled into the global spotlight.
The appointment follows Meta’s $900m (£679m) investment in Cred and comes at a time when WhatsApp is seeking to expand beyond messaging into payments, business services and AI-powered products.
While Indian-origin executives have led some of the world’s biggest technology companies, it is less common for a founder who built his career within India’s startup ecosystem to be handed control of a global consumer platform of that scale. WhatsApp has more than three billion users worldwide.
Long before Meta came calling, Shah had become a recognisable figure in India’s startup ecosystem.
His first major breakthrough came with FreeCharge, a mobile recharge platform he co-founded in 2010 as India’s internet economy was beginning to take shape.
The company grew rapidly and was acquired, external by e-commerce firm Snapdeal in 2015 in what was then one of the largest startup acquisitions in the country.
But Shah’s reputation would eventually expand beyond the companies he built.
After leaving FreeCharge, he spent several years investing in young technology firms and advising founders.
He also worked as an adviser with startup accelerator Y Combinator and Sequoia Capital – roles through which he became closely involved with a generation of founders, especially in the technology sector, as India’s startup ecosystem expanded rapidly.
Raised in Mumbai, Shah studied philosophy in college and did not follow the path taken by many of India’s best-known technology founders through elite engineering or management institutions.
In a post on X, Indian entrepreneur and investor Sanjeev Bikhchandani, external once recalled Shah telling him that he chose philosophy largely because the subject’s morning class schedule allowed him to continue working full-time after his family’s business ran into financial trouble.
In interviews and podcast appearances over the years, Shah has also spoken about taking up odd jobs while studying. Those early experiences, according to him, were followed by the launch of FreeCharge, the company that first brought him national attention.
Founded in 2018, Cred came up with a simple business model centred on rewarding people for paying their credit card bills on time.
In public appearances, Shah has often linked the company’s origins to questions of trust and incentives. The company later expanded into lending, insurance, commerce and wealth management products.
Meta’s latest investment values Cred at about $4.5bn, external, above its previous funding-round valuation but below the peak valuation it achieved in 2022, according to a Reuters report.
Cred also became a recognisable fintech brand, especially with its advertising campaigns that often relied on humour, nostalgia and unexpected celebrity appearances.
But its rise also brought scrutiny. For years, the company was admired for its brand and growth but frequently questioned over its path to profitability.
Critics questioned whether investor enthusiasm and lofty valuations were justified by the company’s financial performance, while supporters argued that many successful technology businesses had also endured long periods of losses while building scale.
The debate resurfaced last year when a social media post questioned why entrepreneurs were often celebrated despite a lack of sustained profits.
Shah responded, external by agreeing that profitable businesses deserved recognition but argued that entrepreneurship itself should be encouraged because it creates jobs and involves taking risks.
To his supporters, Shah represents a generation of entrepreneurs who helped shape India’s modern internet economy, first through digital payments and later through financial technology.
Shweta Rajpal Kohli, chief executive of the Startup Policy Forum, who has worked with Shah on policy issues for several years, described him as someone with “a rare ability to bring a product lens to regulatory complexity, and a regulatory lens to product design”.
“His creativity and problem-solving instinct have been consistently fascinating,” she told the BBC.
To critics, he embodies a startup culture that has sometimes prioritised valuations, fundraising and rapid growth over sustainable business models.
The latest appointment also reflects several themes that have run through Shah’s career.
WhatsApp is increasingly expanding beyond messaging into payments, commerce and business services – areas where Shah has spent much of the past decade building products, investing and advising companies.
India, which is WhatsApp’s largest market, has also been the centre of much of his entrepreneurial career. With this appointment, Shah is set to become the first Indian to lead WhatsApp.
But some observers caution against viewing Shah’s appointment solely through the lens of fintech or payments.
“There’s a tendency to assume Shah was chosen for this role because of his background in fintech and payments. I think that’s too narrow a view,” Nikhil Pahwa, the founder and editor of tech news website MediaNama, told the BBC.
“He’s someone who has spent years thinking about products, consumer behaviour, incentives and growth. And in his businesses, payments have been a mechanism for consumer acquisition, so that products can be marketed to them. This looks less like a payments appointment and more like Meta choosing a founder with experience in scaling the business side of a consumer business.”
Meta has not publicly detailed why it chose Shah for the role. In announcing the appointment, however, chief executive Mark Zuckerberg praised his “builder mentality” and “global perspective”.
Those qualities are likely to be tested as WhatsApp seeks to deepen its presence in payments, business tools and AI-powered products while serving billions of users around the world.
The challenge before Shah is also quite different from anything he has faced before.
At Cred, he was building products for financially active users. His audience consisted largely of founders, investors and technology enthusiasts.
At WhatsApp, he will now be responsible for a service used by people far beyond those circles.
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OPINION: Major internal economic changes are colliding with external forces in testing times for business and politics.
Flouris is a little sceptical of sweat-sensing.
Referring to various unnamed devices that analyse sweat, which he has evaluated in the lab, he says, “Most of these products that we’ve tested do not show the level of accuracy that you would expect.” The results of his experiments are as-yet unpublished.
Sweat sensors, Flouris suggests, work best when worn during long bouts of physical activity – such as a marathon. But they struggle when the exertion is more varied and intermittent. Think a footballer switching from walking to suddenly running very quickly.
In response, Ghaffari says he and his colleagues have published peer-reviewed papers, external on the accuracy of Epicore Biosystems’ gadgets.
He acknowledges that analysing sweat loss over short intervals up to 20 minutes long “can be challenging” but says his company’s products appear effective for 30-minute, or longer, workouts.
Perhaps the most common hydration-focused products available are the smart water bottles that remind you to take a sip throughout the day.
“We try to make it fun,” says Cem Bakiş, head of business development at WaterH, which has a glowing ring that blinks in order to prompt its owner to take a drink. “You can add friends, you can earn points.”
Some smart water bottles work by estimating the weight of liquid in them, and how that changes over time as the drink inside is consumed. But WaterH takes a different approach.
Sensors detect when the water bottle is tipped at an angle, and also the flow rate of fluid as it leaves the vessel. The water bottle will immediately recognise when you’ve had a sufficient quantity of liquid, stresses Bakiş.
I point out that, while some reviews online are positive, other comments criticise the accuracy of these measurements. This is often an issue with how the device is calibrated, and easily rectified, responds Bakiş.
If you don’t want to take instructions in hydration from a water bottle, though, you always have the option of asking your toilet how things are going.
Vivoo makes a urine-analysing gizmo that sits on the rim of a toilet bowl, promising to help you understand your hydration “like never before”.
The device uses optical sensors to work out your “urine specific gravity” – a measure of urine’s density compared to clean water. The denser it is, the more dehydrated you are, generally. Small print on Vivoo’s website emphasises that its products are not intended to provide medical diagnoses.
Urine-based measurements are used to evaluate hydration in scientific studies, says Flouris. Though he notes that there can be some delay between a person entering a dehydrated state, and this becoming detectable in their urine.
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Wednesday’s edition of The New York Times’ popular word-grouping game served up a grid built around classic rock bands, wedding traditions, and a clever color-themed character category that lured solvers toward an early, incorrect grouping before the actual answer revealed itself.
How the Game Works
Connections by The New York Times is a unique daily word game that fans can enjoy online for free. The puzzle challenges players to sort a given set of 16 words into groups of four. Each group features a hidden theme that connects the four words that belong in it. Players get only four guesses to find out how the words are connected and categorize them accordingly. The game also provides a “one away…” pop-up as a hint whenever a player chooses three out of the four correct words in a group. The four groups, Yellow, Green, Blue, and Purple, are divided according to the level of their difficulty, with Yellow being the easiest to sort and Purple featuring the trickiest theme to figure out.
Wednesday’s Four Categories
The themes and answers for the June 24, 2026, NYT Connections puzzle were as follows:
Yellow Group: Prog Bands — GENESIS, KING CRIMSON, PINK FLOYD, RUSH.
Green Group: Classic Wedding Gifts — CHINA, LUGGAGE, MONEY, TOASTER.
Blue Group: Red Characters — CLIFFORD, DEADPOOL, KOOL-AID MAN, MR. KRABS.
Purple Group: Rhyming Compound Words — CHICK FLICK, HELTER SKELTER, HUMPTY DUMPTY, MUMBO JUMBO.
The Color Trap That Caught Solvers Off Guard
Puzzle number 1109 features some heavy misdirection, with several words seemingly fitting into different themes before revealing the true groupings. Watch out for the red herrings today. At first glance, words like Pink and Deadpool look like they could fit into a simple color theme, but committing to that group early will cost you lives.
The trap centers specifically on Pink Floyd’s inclusion in the yellow prog-rock category, since the word “Pink” on its own could plausibly suggest a color-based grouping alongside the actually correct blue category of red-colored fictional characters. One solver described falling into exactly that confusion while working through the grid: “Not being familiar with the work of Kool-Aid Man put me at a disadvantage today and was the reason for my single mistake. While I knew that Clifford of Big Red Dog fame, Deadpool and Mr. Krabs favored the color red.”
Breaking Down the Categories
The yellow category gathered four influential progressive rock bands, bringing together Genesis, King Crimson, Pink Floyd, and Rush — a relatively straightforward grouping for fans of classic rock, though the inclusion of Pink Floyd specifically created the color-based misdirection that tripped up several solvers elsewhere in the grid.
The green category required players to think about traditional gift-giving customs, linking China, Luggage, Money, and Toaster as classic items associated with wedding registries and gift lists.
The blue category, despite its color-based misdirection trap, ultimately gathered four fictional characters who all happen to be red in appearance: Clifford the Big Red Dog, Deadpool, the Kool-Aid Man, and Mr. Krabs from SpongeBob SquarePants.
The Purple Category’s Wordplay Challenge
As is typical for Connections puzzles, the purple category delivered the day’s most inventive twist, built around compound phrases that rhyme internally. The category brought together Chick Flick, Helter Skelter, Humpty Dumpty, and Mumbo Jumbo — four well-known rhyming compound terms that required solvers to think specifically about phrase structure rather than shared meaning or category.
Strategic Advice From Puzzle Outlets
Ahead of revealing the solution, several outlets offered general guidance for navigating Wednesday’s grid. We recommend looking closely at proper names and word structure first. Separating band names from characters and common terms will make the remaining words significantly easier to manage.
Other strategists emphasized broader habits worth building into a daily Connections routine. Before submitting a set of words, you should always check whether they fit somewhere else too. If you hit a dead end, use the shuffle button at the bottom of the grid — placing the words in different positions can spark new connections and act as a mental refresh, helping new patterns emerge that may not have been obvious in the original layout.
A Moderate Difficulty Rating
Despite the color-based misdirection built into the puzzle, early tester feedback suggested Wednesday’s challenge landed closer to the middle of the difficulty spectrum overall. NYT’s early testers rated today’s Connection puzzle 2.5 out of 5, putting it in the medium difficulty level — a rating that aligns with the mixed reactions from solvers who successfully avoided the Pink Floyd trap versus those who fell for it.
The Game’s Continued Popularity
Connections is one of the most popular online word games from The New York Times, closely trailing behind Wordle. The puzzle presents players with a 16-word, four-by-four grid that has helped cement the game’s status as a daily ritual for millions of solvers since its 2023 launch.
Where to Find More Puzzle Help
Besides Connections, other puzzles that fans can play on The New York Times Games collection include Wordle, Strands, Pips, the NYT Crosswords, and Sudoku, among others. Wednesday’s slate also included Wordle puzzle number 1831 and Strands puzzle number 843, giving puzzle enthusiasts a full menu of additional daily challenges beyond the standard Connections grid alone.
With Wednesday’s puzzle now solved by players who successfully navigated the Pink Floyd color trap and identified the rhyming compound words hidden in the purple category, attention turns to Thursday’s edition, puzzle number 1110, when a fresh sixteen-word grid and an entirely new set of hidden categories — and likely a fresh round of cleverly placed red herrings — will once again test the Connections community’s pattern-recognition skills before their four guesses run out.
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President Donald Trump said over 2,000 manufacturing jobs were created in Pennsylvania in recent months during a speech at the Mack Trucks facility in the state.
President Donald Trump on Tuesday visited the Mack Trucks facility in Macungie, Pennsylvania, to tout his economic agenda in a battleground district ahead of this fall’s midterm elections.
Trump spoke to a crowd at the Mack Trucks facility while accompanied by Rep. Ryan Mackenzie, R-Pa., who represents the Keystone State’s 7th congressional district where the plant is located. Mackenzie is running for reelection and will face Democratic challenger Bob Brooks this fall.
The president touted the impact of his economic policies on Pennsylvania, saying that they’ve helped boost job creation in the commonwealth with a particular focus on manufacturing jobs.
“More Americans are working today than at any time in the history of our country. And we’ve created over… 32,000 new jobs just starting in Pennsylvania alone. But you have to get credit for that,” Trump said. “And in the last few months alone, we’ve added 2,600 Pennsylvania manufacturing jobs, and that number’s going to go much higher as the factories start to open.”
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President Donald Trump touted manufacturing jobs in his Pennsylvania speech at a Mack Trucks facility on Tuesday. (Mandel NGAN / AFP via Getty Images)
Trump also praised the role of Mack Trucks, which is owned by Volvo Group of Sweden, in supporting both the regional and national economy with its production.
“For more than 100 years, this legendary company has been making trucks right here in Eastern Pennsylvania, building the heavy machinery that keeps our economy rolling on, factories moving and our industries rolling all across the nation,” Trump said.
| Ticker | Security | Last | Change | Change % |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| VLVLY | VOLVO AB | 32.4 | -0.92 | -2.76% |
| NOK | NOKIA OYJ | 13.70 | -0.73 | -5.06% |
| LLY | ELI LILLY & CO. | 1,107.08 | +5.00 | +0.45% |
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He also said that his move to roll back the Biden administration’s fuel emissions regulations, arguing that those more stringent standards would’ve raised costs on consumers and created problems for companies like Mack Trucks.
“I terminated Biden’s disastrous fuel emission standards that would have crushed Mack Trucks here,” Trump said. “It was the most insane environmental regulation ever conceived of by men. It was totally unreasonable and ridiculous, and you can sell trucks for much less money, that are much better trucks that work, that actually work.”
President Donald Trump at the Mack Trucks facility in Macungie, Pa., Tuesday. (Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)
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Trump’s speech also referenced other notable investments in the region’s manufacturing industries, including the pharmaceutical, medical products and chip-making sectors.
“Eli Lilly has just announced — great company, by the way, drug company — a $3.5 billion investment in a brand-new, state-of-the-art manufacturing facility right down the road that’s going to create over a thousand jobs. Just that one,” Trump explained.
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“Nokia is investing $30 million to expand its semiconductor testing and packaging operations, thousands of jobs,” he added. “And B. Braun has announced a $20 million expansion of its medical device manufacturing operation in Allentown.”
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The first New York Knicks NBA championship in 53 years has the entire city still in rapture days after beating the San Antonio Spurs in five games.
This special moment in Knicks history is something the players have not taken for granted, and one of them is working alongside 1800 Tequila to commemorate the moment in special fashion.
Miles “Deuce” McBride teamed up with the tequila brand to gift his teammates with custom New York-themed bottles of 1800 Milenio Tequila, which is the brand’s luxury expression made for legendary milestones like the Knicks had this season.
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Miles “Deuce” McBride teamed up with 1800 Tequila to create 30 exclusive bottles to commemorate the team’s NBA Finals victory over the San Antonio Spurs. (1800 Tequila)
The bottles were designed specifically for the championship season by local illustrator and longtime Knicks fan Fefi. They feature New York City iconography, hometown sayings, and have visual nods to the grit, pride and energy that have been seen throughout this historic playoff run all around the bottle.
There were only 30 bottles created and gifted to the roster and several staff members from McBride, with each one being a personal keepsake to remember this signature moment in New York sports history.
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“I’d say legacy means so much to me. The legacy of 1800 [Tequila] being passed down, it just correlates really well with everything in my life, everything New York, and everything Knicks,” McBride said.
Miles “Deuce” McBride with New York illustrator Fefi, who delivered the artistry for 1800 Tequila’s 30 commemorative bottles for the Knicks’ championship. (1800 Tequila)
The Knicks made 1800 Tequila the official tequila of the team, and that partnership was on full display during the playoff run. While having sold-out Knicks limited edition bottles, it also launched Row 18(00), which was a campaign featuring New York-based content creators that gave real Knicks fans who may have gotten priced out of attending playoff games at Madison Square Garden the chance to watch from Row 18 inside the arena.
Game 3 of the NBA Finals between the Knicks and Spurs, which marked the first finals game at MSG since 1999, had an average sale price around $7,683, according to Vivid Seats earlier this month. The cheapest ticket to attend was $3,940, and those four-figure prices were also seen earlier in the playoffs.
Jordyn Woods, the fiancee of Knicks star Karl-Anthony Towns, looks down at 1800 Tequila bottle commemorating the Knicks’ championship. (1800 Tequila)
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