"We are seeing this big shift globally, as well as in India, where we are seeing people using our platforms not just to connect with things they care about, or people they care about, but also businesses that they are interested in, or want to learn more about or make a purchase from. So we are seeing that behaviour market after market, and especially played out in India," said Meta India VP Sandhya Devanathan.

She spoke to CNBC-TV18 on the sidelines of the Meta Conversations event.

"Globally, I think we have 200 million businesses on WhatsApp, using our WhatsApp business messaging app. So you see this organic behaviour translate to not just users, but also what businesses do on our platform," she said. Devanathan said that a similiar trend can be observed in India, where conversations from a user to a business on WhatsApp have doubled in the past year.

Earlier in the day, Meta Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that India is leading the world in terms of how people and businesses have embraced messaging as the better way to get things done. He said in his virtual address at the Meta’s Annual Conversations in Mumbai on Wednesday.

Zuckerberg added that the company is looking at building more tools for its messaging products — WhatsApp, Messenger, Instagram DMs — based on the trends and how not just people, but also businesses are using these apps.

Along similar lines, Devanathan asserted that Meta wants to make business onboarding easy, and help customers make better purchase decisions and allow businesses to thrive.

She added that the company has already introduced payments to businesses through WhatsApp to make the process easier.

Meta on Wednesday (September 20) announced the launch of Flows for WhatsApp Business. This feature promises to empower businesses worldwide and enable them to offer a seamless, interactive experience to their customers, all within the confines of a chat window.

Devanathan said that a lot of announcements have an India lens. "JioMart is a perfect example of how we have taken an India first lens, and what we think is going to happen, as we are going to probably see experiences like JioMart play out in other markets, globally, for us and in other countries."

Jio Platforms announced on Monday had announced the launch of the first-ever end-to-end shopping experience on WhatsApp in collaboration with Meta Platforms. Calling it a “global first”, Reliance said in a statement that JioMart on WhatsApp will allow users in India, including those who have never shopped online before, to seamlessly browse through JioMart’s entire grocery catalogue, add items to their cart, and make the payment to complete the purchase — all without leaving the WhatsApp chat.

"That's an area where I think in terms of what we are building on WhatsApp, not just on, not just the JioMart type experiences, but everything else. Like we talked about Bill Pay, we talked about UPI, I think about it, if Brazil is going to go the DPI route, maybe you know, this is something that we can take to other markets as well because what we've built on payments today is again with an India first lens," Devanathan said.

First Published:Sept 20, 2023 7:23 PM IST