New Delhi: WhatsApp CEO Kunal Shah isn’t gaining friends with the statements he made about India in the past. Now that he has been hired by Meta, all eyes are on him. The remarks he made earlier this year, in May, at the Groww India Investor Festival 2026, are doing the rounds now. He had said that most Indian languages do not have words for efficiency and productivity.
“That vocabulary is not in our core DNA. We don’t value time as much,” he is heard saying in the video. He was talking in the context of young people in India wasting time on Instagram reels.
Nityananda Misra, author with a background in investment banking, has released a video debunking Shah. In a three-minute-long video, Misra cites where and how Indian languages have had concepts and words for efficiency and productivity by going to etymological roots and all.
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Sanskrit, Hindi dictionaries & Kabir
“No. There are many such words and Indians do value time,” Misra said in the video. “Kunal Shah is finding faults with core Indian DNA and Indian languages due to his own limited knowledge of the history of the two words and their equivalence in Indian languages.”
He added that the usage of words efficiency and productivity is relatively recent in the context of time management. Not older than the 19th and 20th centuries. “Old English words have acquired new meanings to describe new concepts.”
Misra then goes on to cite Hindi-English dictionaries by Mahendra Chaturvedi and Hardev Bahari—the Hindi words for efficiency are Karya Kushalata, Kshamata, Dakshata and Nipunata. The Hindi words for productivity are: Utpadakata, Utpadita, Utpadanakshamata and Urvarata. “All these words are of Sanskrit origin and therefore exist (2:16) in one form or another in many other Indian languages,” Misra said.
The author also countered Shah’s claim that Indians do not value time by referring to the Sanskrit vocabulary.
“The Sanskrit word Samayika means punctual, exact, precise, reasonable and timely. A famous piece of advice on time management comes from the Mahabharata,” he said.
He ended the video by citing Kabir—- ‘kal kare so aaj kar, aaj kareso ab, palame parale hoyagi, bahuri karega kab’
“I think Kunal Shah does not need a translation for this one at least,” Misra added. When the author posted his video on X, many agreed with his argument that the new WhatsApp CEO may not know what he is talking about. Many joked that it is fitting that Shah has been made CEO of an app that is infamous for spreading misinformation in India. However, a few commentators also objected to Misra.
“Great Sir! It is there but only used rarely. We all have moved from Sanskrit or pure hindi to a more hinglish culture. Even our Hindi teachers rarely use these words. At least for millennials I can say we haven’t used in our normal day to day conversation,” wrote one user.