WhatsApp has accumulated over 400 million customers in India, confirmed the instant messaging app today, reaffirming its huge reach in its largest market.
Amitabh Kant, CEO of Niti Aayog, a highly influential local think tank, disclosed the new stat at Thursday’s WhatsApp press conference in New Delhi. A spokesman for the WhatsApp revealed that the platform actually had over 400 million active monthly customers in the country.
Over two years after WhatsApp said it had reached 200 million customers in India, the notable revelation emerged. Neither WhatsApp nor Facebook shared the count of Indian-specific customers in the interim era.
The public disclosure today should assist Facebook to reaffirm its domination in India, where almost every smartphone consumer seems to be using it. India has about 450 million users of smartphones, according to study company Counterpoint. (Some other study companies stick the amount down.)
The service is increasingly mutating to serve extra requirements as WhatsApp becomes prevalent in the country. Companies such as the Meesho social trade app were built on top of WhatsApp. Meesho was lately supported by Facebook in what was its first such investment in an Indian company. Then, of course, for its role in spreading fake data in the country, WhatsApp also came under hot water.
In the latest months, as ByteDance and others aggressively expand their businesses in India, the perceived domination of Facebook in the nation has been under attack. ByteDance’s TikTok, accumulating 120 million customers in India, has been declared by many as Facebook’s top competitor.
A spokesman for WhatsApp also said that India remains the largest market for WhatsApp. Facebook said it had about 250 million users in India in 2017, a figure it hasn’t updated in the years since.
WhatsApp, which has approximately 1.5 billion active monthly customers globally, has no significant competitors in India. Messenger, another Facebook-owned platform, and Hike, which millions of customers check every day, are the nearest to the rival it has in the country.
Times Internet — an Internet conglomerate in India running multiple news outlets, entertainment facilities, and more — claims to reach 450 million customers every month in the nation. WhatsApp Global Chief, Will Cathcart also said at the press conference that WhatsApp intends to roll out WhatsApp Pay, its payment service, to all its customers by the end of the year.
