Manoj Chavan

Avid reader, doting father, Views personal.

[Kunal Shah @kunalb11]

It’s been a minute.

2015–2018
- Exited FreeCharge. Spent time learning and investing.
- Pondered about: Why can't trust be rewarded? Started with $1M of personal capital.
- Launched CRED to reward people for paying credit card bills on time.

2019–2025
- Built a system run by a team that values ownership, judgment, and craft.
- Grew from 0 to 17M members by aligning incentives with behaviour.
- Built several products during COVID lockdowns.
- Raised $900M+ from global investors. Did 4 ESOP buybacks.
- Made Indiranagar and IPL ads slightly more interesting.
- Received a full stack of regulatory licences.
- Lost 35 kilos.
- Scaled from 0 to ~$325M ( ~₹3,200 crore) in annual revenue across payments, lending, insurance, commerce, wealth, and credit cards.
2026
- First profitable quarter (yet occasionally asked what our business model is)
- Raised another $900M from Meta in primary and secondary capital.
- Announcing our 5th ESOP buyback.

Today

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.

Extremely grateful to our members, partners, regulators, and investors who made this possible. And to our board, Shailendra, Micky, Saurabh for their extraordinary conviction.

Team CRED, I’ll still expect you to be a 10x version of yourselves.

As for me, I’ll be joining Meta to lead WhatsApp globally.

Meta comes in as a minority investor in CRED. No access to member data.

While it’s come very far, the delta between WhatsApp today and its full potential is massive. I look forward to working with Mark, Chris, and the leadership across Meta for the next step in WhatsApp’s journey. Will, thank you for scaling something the world relies on quietly, and for making this transition smooth.

Onwards.

[Parle Products @ParleFamily]

Thank you @narendramodi 🙏🏻

[Cdr Abhilash Tomy KC, NM @abhilashtomy]

When I asked her to marry me, I was broke. My bank account was in overdraft.

She still said yes.

Our wedding feast was just vada pav and tea. It was all I could afford.

5 days later, I left for Europe to race. I returned 5 months later in a wheelchair, nearly paralyzed.

She looked after me while expecting our first child.

4 years later, she had the courage to send me back for another round the world race.

8 months later, I returned victorious.

Behind every win is a partner who is rarely seen, like the wind in the sails.

Here is to the unsung partner. Happy wedding anniversary!

[Sheldrick Wildlife Trust @SheldrickTrust]

Wait for it…Sagala absolutely nailed her brand new baby’s debut! Right after giving birth, she headed to our Voi stockades so she could share the moment with her human-elephant family. As you can see, the dependent orphans were delighted to meet their new baby ‘cousin.’

Not so long ago, Sagala was a dependent orphan herself. Although she is now living wild, she remains deeply boned to the people who raised her for the better part of a decade. We are so thrilled and honoured that she chose to return home and include us in her big moment. Revisit Sagala’s story: https://t.co/9Dkt5d43mD

[Ashwini Vaishnaw @AshwiniVaishnaw]

India is working on all 5 layers of the AI architecture: application, model, chip, infra and energy. We are building the foundation for global AI services.

📍 World Economic Forum, Davos

[The Better India @thebetterindia]

When Kashish Methwani was crowned Miss International India 2023, it was clear she had the world at her feet.

But she wasn’t interested in choosing between beauty and brains, glamour and grit. She wanted it all, and she went after it.

A Pune native, she holds an MSc in Biotechnology from Savitribai Phule Pune University and a neuroscience thesis from the Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru. She could have pursued a PhD abroad, but she chose to serve her country.

In 2024, she scored All India Rank 2 in the Combined Defence Services exam and joined the Army Air Defence, a combat wing demanding precision, courage, and skill.

On September 6, 2025, Kashish was commissioned as Lieutenant Kashish Methwani, the first woman officer in her family and one of the few Miss India titleholders to join the Indian Army.

Her story proves that “either/or” is a myth. You can have both and more.

#KashishMethwani #LtKashishMethwani #MissIndia #IndianArmy #WomenInUniform

[Lt Kashish Methwani, Miss International India, Women In Uniform, Inspiring]

[Richard Hanania @RichardHanania]

Vivek: "If you call Usha Vance, the second lady of the United States of America, a 'jeet,' you have no place in the future of the conservative movement."

It's amazing how this is way clearer than anything Vance has ever said to defend his wife.

[Supriya Sahu IAS @supriyasahuias]

Zero elephant deaths on railway tracks in the last two years in Madukkarai, Tamil Nadu, on the very tracks that once witnessed tragic losses of precious elephant lives. Last night, I was with my team at the Madukkarai AI Elephant Centre, reviewing the functioning of the AI early-warning system, which has enabled nearly 6,000 safe elephant crossings, showing that technology can meaningfully reduce conflict when applied thoughtfully. No system is ever perfect, but solutions like this show what is possible when prevention is prioritised.#AIforgood #elephants #MadukkaraiAIproject

[Harmy @harrrmy]

timeline cleanse im in tears

[Mohini Maheshwari @mohinimaheshwa]

On the night of May 20, 2025, a little girl in a faded pink frock fell asleep on her mother’s lap at Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus. Her parents, simple people from Solapur, had come to Mumbai for her father’s treatment. They were exhausted. Just for a moment, the mother closed her eyes.

When she opened them, her daughter was gone.

Six months.
Six months of walking from police station to police station.
Six months of showing the same crumpled photograph to strangers on trains, in slums, in orphanages.
Six months of the father not sleeping, the mother not eating, both of them growing hollow-eyed, whispering the same name into the dark: “Aarohi… Aarohi…”

In Varanasi, a thousand kilometres away, a tiny girl with no memory of her real name was learning to call herself “Kashi.” She had been found crying near the railway tracks in June, barefoot and terrified. The orphanage gave her food, a bed, and a new name. She smiled easily, because children always do, but sometimes at night she clutched the edge of her blanket and asked for “Aai” — Marathi for mother — and no one understood.

Back in Mumbai, the police refused to close the file. They printed posters with Aarohi’s face, stuck them on every platform from Lokmanya Tilak Terminus to Bhusawal to Varanasi Cantt. They ran newspaper ads, knocked on doors, begged journalists for help. Six months is a long time for hope to stay alive, but some officers carried her photograph in their shirt pockets like it was their own child.

Then, on November 13, a local reporter in Varanasi saw the poster. Something clicked. He had seen a girl who spoke Marathi words in her sleep. He made a phone call.

The next morning, a Mumbai Police inspector sat in front of a laptop in Varanasi and opened a video call. On the screen appeared a little girl in a pink frock — the same colour she was wearing the day she vanished. The mother, standing behind the officer in Mumbai, saw her daughter and collapsed without a sound. The father just kept repeating, “That’s my Aarohi… that’s my baby…”

They flew her back on Children’s Day — November 14.

When the plane landed, the entire Mumbai Crime Branch was waiting. They had bought her balloons and a new frock, sky blue this time. But the moment the little girl stepped out and saw the sea of khaki uniforms, she did something no one expected.

She ran.

Not away — toward them.

Tiny legs pumping, arms outstretched, she threw herself at the nearest officer and laughed — the purest, clearest laugh that had been missing from the world for half a year. The officer, a tough man who had seen everything, felt his eyes burn. He lifted her high, and she wrapped her arms around his neck like he was family.

Her parents were crying too hard to walk. So the policemen carried their daughter to them.

The mother touched her face again and again, as if checking she was real. The father fell to his knees and pressed his forehead to his child’s tiny feet, sobbing words no one could understand except God.

And the little girl? She just kept smiling, looking from her parents to the officers and back again, completely unaware that she had turned an entire police station into a sobbing, laughing, praying family.

Six months of darkness ended in one hug.

Aarohi is home now.
The kidnapper is still out there, but that is tomorrow’s fight.

Today, a mother is singing lullabies again.
Today, a father is smiling in his sleep.
And somewhere in Mumbai, there are policemen who will never forget the weight of a four-year-old girl in their arms — the weight of an entire life returned.

Sometimes the uniform doesn’t just catch thieves.
Sometimes it carries lost children all the way back to their mothers’ hearts.

[Mario Nawfal @MarioNawfal]

GROK SAVES A MAN’S LIFE AFTER ER MISSES NEAR-RUPTURED APPENDIX

A 49-year-old man says Grok, the AI built by Elon’s xAI, saved his life after an ER doctor misdiagnosed a near-ruptured appendix as acid reflux and sent him home.

In agony for 24 hours, the man turned to Grok for help.

After listing his symptoms, the AI flagged a “perforated ulcer or atypical appendicitis” and told him to go back immediately and demand a CT scan.

He copied Grok’s reasoning, returned to the hospital, insisted on the scan, and doctors found an inflamed appendix on the verge of rupture.

Six hours later, it was removed, and the man woke up laughing under anesthesia, pain-free.

He later revealed he didn’t tell doctors that Grok had advised him, claiming instead that “his sister, a nurse,” had urged the test, worried they’d ignore AI input.

The post went viral, with users calling Grok’s intervention proof that AI can spot what overworked doctors miss.

Some even said they’d “welcome AI doctors if it meant better care.”

Elon has long predicted AI-powered medicine would arrive before most expect.

After this? It might already be here.

Source: @Teslarati

[Ambreen Zaidi @Ambreenzaidi]

@LtGenDPPandey Had to do it Gen Pandey, if we don’t speak up, the hijackers of the narrative will keep steering the truth. It’s time to stop them.

[Ambreen Zaidi @Ambreenzaidi]

This is Us.

Since the religion of soldiers has suddenly become the talk of the town, this is us, performing puja and hawan when my husband was commanding his regiment.
In the Indian Army, the religion of your troops becomes your religion. That’s how it has always been. That’s how it will always remain.

[Rahul Shivshankar @RShivshankar]

CDS SOUNDS AN ALARM. IMPORTANT.
"Our expectation from the industry. We expect a bit of nationalism and patriotism in your profit-driven endeavours...Industry will have to be truthful about its capabilities to us. You can't leave us in a lurch. If you sign a contract and you don't deliver at that particular time, it's a capability that is being lost."

[Sonam Mahajan @AsYouNotWish]

Credible sources within the J&K security apparatus have confirmed to me that the lead which ultimately led to the arrests of doctors in Faridabad and Saharanpur, who were planning large-scale terror strikes and turned out to be linked to the prime suspect in the Delhi blast case, was generated by the local CID. The information was then handed over to a field-level officer in Kashmir, a brave and capable policeman with a history of facing injuries in stone-pelting and terror incidents. He pursued it tooth and nail, painstakingly developing actionable intelligence that enabled the subsequent raids and arrests.

The planning behind these attacks was complex. The conspirators sought to present the strikes as lone wolf ISIS-inspired operations, carefully designed to suggest that Indian Muslims were waging war against the state and to obscure any connection to Jaish-e-Mohammed. This approach would have amplified societal divides while masking a foreign actor’s role. Reports also indicate renewed attempts by a hostile intelligence agency to trace and target Kashmiri Muslim police officers involved in anti-terror operations, reflecting its desperate efforts to exploit divisions in the aftermath of a terror attack in Delhi in a post-Operation Sindoor era. The adversary appears deeply rattled by the JKP’s composure and coordination during Operation Sindoor, particularly its precision in intelligence gathering and civil management amid sustained shelling.

It is against this backdrop that the decisive work of the Kashmir Police officer stands out. In pursuing the lead and persisting through multiple layers of planning and deception, he was instrumental in preventing what could have been a catastrophe. In moments when someone else might have looked away, he chose to stay the course. Perhaps that is what quiet patriotism sounds like. And maybe that is where nations are held together, in silence, by a few who simply do not look away.

[Manoj Chavan @ManojChavanX]

Do you remember when you joined X? I do! #MyXAnniversary

[Bhavya Narasimhamurthy @Bhavyanmurthy]

Late post

After my selection as a Lieutenant in Territorial Army of Indian Army, every year I serve in Indian army for a short period. This year with your love and blessings I successfully completed 3 months training at the prestigious Indian Military Academy Dehradun, now I am back in Bengaluru.

This training has been the toughest yet the best days of my life, I was trained to strengthen my mental and physical endurance. I learnt from the best and today I am the strongest version of myself.

Grateful to god for giving me this opportunity
1. to serve my country as an Indian Army Officer and
2. ⁠to serve my state as a politician.

Jai Hind 🇮🇳
Jai Karnataka 💛❤️ 1/4

[Meghan McCain @MeghanMcCain]

As the only person to conduct a sit down on camera interview with our Second Lady.

She is not only a huge asset because of her poise, intelligence and grace - but women across the country love and admire her. Our interview had an absolutely enormously positive reaction - feel free to read the comments yourself. In fact I don’t know if I have ever interviewed anyone so universally liked.

You’re out of your mind if you don’t see how positively impactful and powerful she is. And quite frankly, refreshing of a figure.

She is someone whose appeal crosses party and political lines and has given such a huge boost and brought warmth to our Vice President. She is among other things a modern mother and a style icon.

She’s personally my favorite person in the Trump administration.

You know nothing, Mr. Hakimian, least of all the great appeal of our iconic Second Lady.

[Ved Malik @Vedmalik1]

@megirish2001 Akshay was obviously a promising officer who took our military history and inspiration from it seriously.