WhatsApp, the most popularly used instant messaging app has commenced it’s pre-operational work towards diversifying it’s business. The messaging giant is now working on a new platform targeted for small businesses.
As all businesses are surfacing their growth business plans in India, Whatsapp too has finalized India as it’s testing ground for ‘WhatsApp for Business’. As the name suggests, the new app is meant for commercial messaging through which WhatsApp wants to make money.
India boasts of Whatsapp’s largest base. Due to over 200 million users who constitute approximately 15% of it’s active users, Whatsapp has strategically selected it’s launch pad as India to ensure a grosser kick start to it’s new venture. Not only this, India also houses 35 million small and medium businesses.
WhatsApp for Business will allow small business, large brands, and enterprises to communicate with a large pool of consumers, without spamming them.
WhatsApp for Business will first be launched in India, after which it will be taken to other emerging markets like Brazil and Indonesia.
WhatsApp for Business will be an app categorically designed for small businesses to send targeted messages and videos.
“WhatsApp for Business is all about small and medium businesses, where you have a small employee count and have a large customer count, and the goals are very different,” Brian Acton, co-founder of WhatsApp, expressed in an interview.
“That is why we continue to invest in India, and that is why we continue to leverage India to teach us what we can do to make lives better – commercial messaging, digital transaction and the alike,” he added.
Acton recently had a light conversation with India’s information technology minister Ravi Shankar Prasad on Friday to discuss all details of commercial messages and digital transactions. If things go as expected, this project will prove to be a major hit in the small business arena.
India has indeed proved as a bright and prosperous hub for all big giants- be it Whatsapp, Facebook or Google. With noteworthy developments made by the incumbent Prime Minister Hon’ble Prime Minister Narendra Modi, there has been an incredible difference in how India is perceived by other nations from the business perspective. The ease of doing businesses clubbed with faster and transparent flow of funds has contributed towards making India what it is today.
