Meta, the Facebook parent company, has been speeding up its monetisation of WhatsApp in India, the world’s second-largest internet market. As more and more people get engaged in daily conversations on WhatsApp, businesses are using the app to reach customers through conversational commerce. It is mainly small and medium enterprises that are choosing to use WhatsApp as a source of attracting new customers as well as maintaining relations with the existing ones. This has placed WhatsApp at the prime position to become the most relevant business messaging platform in India, and Meta is trying to leap by capitalising on its range of WhatsApp Business products.
Meta India Vice President Sandhya Devanathan explained in an interview with Moneycontrol, how India has emerged as an important market for business messaging for Meta. “India is one of the key priority markets for business messaging globally. In the past year alone, revenues from Click-to-WhatsApp ads have doubled in the country,” she revealed. However, she did not give specific revenue figures.
Click-to-WhatsApp ads enable a business to add a call-to-action button on Facebook or Instagram and open a direct conversation with the business in WhatsApp. This has proved to be successful for businesses in India, as conversational commerce is beginning to become the new way of doing business fast. “90% of the people we surveyed interact with businesses on WhatsApp at least once a week,” added Devanathan, indicating the importance of this app for businesses and for its users.
Meta’s vision for India looks at more than just monetisation of WhatsApp. “Our goal is that irrespective of their size, business finds us as the best fit for them to invest their advertising dollars, whatever is bottom line-sale or deeper engagement,” she said. She also added how the platform is about to become central to such an approach since businesses are moving into more conversational models.
Features like WhatsApp Flows are also accelerating this change. This feature in WhatsApp allows businesses to create more streamlined and interactive consumer experiences, and thousands of businesses in India have already started using the feature. According to Devanathan, the payment volume on WhatsApp has doubled in the last six months, and the platform is no longer only a messaging tool but an emerging driver of e-commerce in India.
Meta’s business messaging push in India is part of a broader strategy to diversify its revenue streams beyond traditional digital advertising. “Business messaging is one of the biggest growth drivers for Meta in India,” Devanathan said. She also pointed to the rapid growth of Meta’s advertising business in the country, where digital ad spending as a percentage of India’s GDP remains relatively low compared to other markets. As the GDP and digital penetration grow, we’re quite positive that both the ad side and messaging side will grow, she said.
While Meta works hard at monetising WhatsApp, it is creating equal value for businesses as well as consumers. “The money we make on business messaging isn’t our primary consideration right now,” she said. “What’s more important is ensuring that both businesses and users derive value from that exchange.”
She hinted that future innovations will involve AI so that businesses can build much richer and deeper interactions with their customers on the platform.
Meta is also showing up as an “India-first” company with a strong focus on building products specifically for the Indian market. According to Devanathan, Meta’s product teams work closely with the Indian market from the beginning, ensuring that their insights shape the company’s roadmap. “We have seen a lot more teams come in and spend time building, particularly for India, and that contributes to the overall energy and optimism we have for this market,” she said.
Ahead, Meta has much larger plans for India, including encouraging the country’s emerging developer community. “A significant portion of Llama downloads, our AI platform, are coming from India. We’re working to ensure that startups building on Llama have community support and access to global resources,” added Devanathan.
With renewed zest and optimism, Meta is banking on business messaging and AI to drive growth in its next chapter in India. “India is changing fast, and we’re making sure we stay on top of what’s happening so we can help businesses here grow,” Devanathan concluded, hinting at even more innovations to come as Meta deepens its engagement with the Indian market.
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