Kunal Shah was born on 30 May 1979 and raised in Mumbai. When he was 16, his family was hit by a financial crisis. He began earning by selling henna cones and pirated CDs, running tuitions and operating a home cyber cafe.
He chose philosophy at Wilson College because classes ran only from 8 to 10 am, leaving the day free for work. He started a part-time MBA at NMIMS and left in 2004.
In 2009 he founded PaisaBack, which turned into FreeCharge in 2010. Snapdeal announced its purchase in April 2015 at about Rs 2,800 crore. He then started CRED, a members-only platform for credit card bill payments and rewards.
CRED was valued at about $6.4 billion in 2022. A 2025 round valued it at about $3.5 billion to $3.64 billion. In June 2026 Shah succeeded Will Cathcart as head of WhatsApp. FY25 operating revenue at CRED was about Rs 2,735 crore.