NEW DELHI: Brian Acton, co-founder of popular messaging app WhatsApp, today called on IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad to discuss ways in which the company can contribute to India’s vision for digital commerce.
Facebook-owned WhatsApp has almost become the default messaging application for people in countries like India and Brazil. In India, it competes with the likes of Hike, Snapchat and Viber.
India is also the biggest market for WhatsApp. Of its over one billion users, about 200 million are here.
WhatsApp had said it would focus on rolling out commercial messaging this year for businesses as it looks to tap into enterprises for monetising its platform.
Highlighting the country’s importance, Acton said WhatsApp hopes to contribute more to “India’s vision for digital commerce in future”.
“India is a very important country to us, and we’re proud to have 200 million people who use WhatsApp to connect with their friends, family and communities. We build every WhatsApp feature to be simple, reliable, and secure, and this vision is in line with what Digital India promises to achieve,” he added.
“I also appreciated the good role of platforms like facebook, WhatsApp are playing in the field of digital empowerment,” Prasad added.
Earlier this week, Microsoft chief Satya Nadella was also in town to meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Prasad to discuss the company’s digital inclusion programme that leverages technology for improving rural healthcare and education.
Acton, who is on a one-day trip to India, is slated to address students at IIT-Delhi, along with WhatsApp Head of Business, Neeraj Arora, later this evening.