Meta Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Wednesday said India is leading the world on how people and businesses have embraced messaging as a better way to get things done, as the social media giant Meta unveiled a slew of new tools aimed at supercharging businesses using WhatsApp.

Announcing the line-up of key offerings for WhatsApp, Mark Zuckerberg said the company has continued to innovate with its messaging formats, group chats and broadcast channels.

“India, (is) a country that’s at the forefront of a lot of what we’re going to talk about today. You’re leading the world in terms of how people and businesses have embraced messaging as the better way to get things done,”  Zuckerberg said during a virtual address at their tent pole event for business messaging, Meta’s Annual Conversations that took place in Mumbai.

Business conversations plays a key role in monetising WhatsApp, which at present delivers annual revenues between $500 million to $1 billion, contributing very little to Meta’s overall revenues.

Sandhya Devanathan, Vice President and Managing Director of Meta India added during her keynote at the event that overall the possibilities offered by the Indian market are limitless. Speaking about the role of messaging for businesses, Devanathan added, “It (Meta) is now a thriving platform for business interaction, Indians are using WhatsApp to debut , discover and interact with businesses. And messaging is becoming a popular route to interact with businesses.”

New features

Meta demoed new features for business messaging including WhatsApp flows that would allow users to customise experiences within chat threads.

WhatsApp also introduced WhatsApp Payment-to-Merchant and Indian businesses using the WhatsApp Business Platform, where people will now be able to add items to a cart and send a payment using the payment method of their choice (including WhatsApp, UPI apps, debit and credit cards, etc.). 

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