NEW DELHI: Popular messaging app WhatsApp will soon explore areas of cooperation to push India’s digital commerce initiatives and digital empowerment. On Friday, Brian Acton, co-founder of WhatsApp, met Information Technology Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad and discussed the opportunities for the platform to participate in and contribute to the growth of India’s digital initiatives.
WhatsApp had recently announced that its future strategy would be to focus on rolling out commercial messaging in 2017 for businesses as part of its future course of business to tap into enterprises for monetising its platform. It has also announced that the company will test tools that allow users to communicate with businesses and organisations such as banks and airlines through its platform.
“Brian Acton, the co-founder of WhatsApp and a fine mind in the field of information technology met me today…I also appreciated the good role of platforms like Facebook, WhatsApp are playing in the field of digital empowerment,” the minister tweeted.Sources who attended the meeting said that Brian was especially interested in understanding India’s vision for digital commerce. He was keen to know more about the government’s focus to connect the unconnected, using the social messaging platform and also the role it has played in reaching out with government programmes like improving sanitation.
“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 saying that the company would continue to invest to help more people across India connect to its platform.