Bulk texting in India may have grown to be a ~US$900 million market, but it has also turned into a messaging wasteland. Like an email spam folder you only occasionally rummage through. Last week, I got a fright when I received three business messages on WhatsApp in one day—one from one of the two largest e-commerce platforms, the second from one of the largest industrial houses in the country, and the third from some unknown organic food brand. I had no WhatsApp transaction history with any of them. Welcome to WhatsApp Business’ promotional messaging launch! Meta’s golden goose in India, WhatsApp Business is now its fastest-growing division. WA-B is on its way to earning annual revenue exceeding Rs 1000 crore or US$128.5 million in 2022. To that end, it doubled its pricing in February. Both the parent and its local business partners believe India will contribute 20-30% of WhatsApp’s global revenues. WhatsApp is in talks with Indian government-owned oil and gas producer Bharat Petroleum Corporation Limited (BPCL) to become its primary channel of communication, instead of text messages. Meaning, 85 million users who reach out to BPCL for LPG supplies could now be doing it via WhatsApp Business. You’d think the utility would pay WhatsApp a hefty fee. But no, WhatsApp has paid BPCL Rs 1 crore (US$128,500) from its promotional budget to perfect its chatbot. After having built relationships with banks, insurance, utilities, retail and travel, WhatsApp is going deeper into those and newer areas. As it pulls out all the stops, Meta’s 2020 investment in Jio Platforms is bearing fruit. For two months, WhatsApp Business has been quietly running trials with a few million Reliance Jio telecom users’ phone recharges. This is the second such feature that Meta is testing first with Jio before launching it elsewhere. No one wants an SMS scam redux, right?
