Meta India is planning to add AI capabilities to its business messaging, which will help small and medium-sized businesses using the platform automate certain transactions and reduce processing time, Ravi Garg, director, business messaging, Meta India, said in an interaction with B. Krishna Mohan.
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AI Assisted
For SMEs, having their own app or website is still a long way off, but many businesses are considering using messaging to create small catalogs, push information that customers are seeking, and complete sales through messaging platforms. Meta India is planning to add AI capabilities to business messaging. We believe that GenAI capabilities can help in this space. We are investing in bringing it to our messaging service so that businesses can benefit from it. AI companies are experimenting with AI experiences on messaging platforms. WhatsApp APIs allow brands to create chatbots through virtual assistant technology. The next decade will be an era where technology, especially AI and Generative AI, will empower businesses, especially Indian SMEs.
concentration
Business messaging is our priority in India and also a revenue driver for our India operations. Messaging is at the heart of transforming how people interact with each other and businesses. People want connections that are conversational, immediate, real-time and fast. They prefer to leverage conversational commerce for their everyday needs.
user
Businesses of all sizes have turned to Whatsapp for business messaging. We are investing in ways to help businesses easily build their presence and send the right message to the right people for better ROI. With the growing adoption of messaging platforms across large and small businesses, more brands will turn towards conversational commerce in the coming days. A recent study revealed that 70% of businesses surveyed are already using conversational platforms to engage with over 50% of their customer base. Over 60% of businesses plan to increase their spending on conversational platforms in the next 3-4 years.
Revenue
In particular, click-to-WhatsApp ad revenue continues to grow rapidly and has already reached billions of dollars in annual revenue rates. India is an important market and business messaging is a key driver of revenue in India. Click-to-Message ad revenue in India has doubled year-over-year. Today, more than 60% of WhatsApp users in India send messages to business app accounts every week.
Recently Added
The company announced several product updates last year, including Flows for WhatsApp. It also expanded payment options to allow users to pay businesses in their preferred way directly within WhatsApp chats. These products are seeing momentum; businesses are now using them for everything from answering questions to closing sales and sending relevant updates. With AI acting as an assistant within the WhatsApp Business app, it can help you create Facebook or Instagram ads that launch WhatsApp chats with a click, get support with features like catalogs and quick replies, and more.
Verified Business
We're starting to roll out Meta Verified to small and medium-sized businesses using the WhatsApp Business app. Meta Verified helps businesses establish a presence on WhatsApp, build trust with customers, grow their brand, and make people more confident to contact them. Businesses with Meta Verified will get access to premium features like verified badges, impersonation protection, account support, verified channels, a custom WhatsApp page that can be found in a web search, and enhanced multi-device support so multiple employees can respond to customers to better serve them.
Use Case
Companies across verticals have implemented these features, including Bengaluru Metro, Delhi Metro, and Hyderabad Metro. Nagpur Metro has also introduced ticketing, becoming the sixth metro service after Bengaluru, Delhi, Hyderabad, Chennai, and Pune to offer ticket booking and purchasing within WhatsApp chat. Flows is being used for credit card authorizations, diagnostic bookings, local language implementation in chatbots, and more.
