India runs on Chai; and WhatsApp too? Should India de-risk itself?

India is going to experience a rapid rise in WhatsApp usage, especially driven by AI, local languages based voice bots, and rural-focused applications. While this creates huge opportunities, it also introduces risks due to over-dependence on a single private platform. India must promote open messaging standards and prepare contingency plans to safeguard communication access for all citizens.

Current & Future of WhatsApp in India

As per WorldPopulationReview.com, there are about 85 Crore (~850M) users of WhatsApp in India. With advancements in AI & local language support (text and voice), these numbers will go up rapidly in the next couple of years. With AI adoption by Small/Medium enterprises and non-profits, many new end-user use cases like those below would emerge in the next few months:

• Booking train/bus tickets through voice or text

• Accessing information about government schemes

• Automatically filling out forms by uploading Aadhaar, driving-license, marks cards, etc

• Citizen complaints and grievance redressal

There would be other set of use cases that enables semi-literate users for their business-specific operations:

• A potable water-related non-profit is exploring asking their field personnel to take photos of water meters and send them through WhatsApp for it to automate meter readings

• A blue-collar recruitment startup is using WhatsApp to gather information through voice/text bots

• Some startups are exploring to perform patient monitoring/feedback post-hospitalization through local language bots based on Whatsapp & regular calls.

There are third-party companies, tools, and frameworks (like turn.io, Gliffic, etc) in the market (both for-profit and non-profit) that act as WhatsApp accelerators for many more use cases. All these use cases will get a new AI-wave of WhatsApp users from semi-urban, rural, and elderly populations in urban areas.

If Mark turns Musk, is India prepared enough?

Recently, many tweets of Elon Musk related to the Russia-Ukraine conflict stirred controversy. Musk talked about the backbone of the Ukranian army collapsing if he turns off the Starlink internet, and also had a rough X/twitter chat with the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Poland and calling him a “small man”.

An article in ForeignPolicy.com [7] said, “Powerful private actors are not reliable allies in Ukraine’s battle to preserve its territorial integrity and build a resilient internet”.

In 2021, WhatsApp’s privacy policy change forced users to either accept the new terms or lose access. While digitally savvy users easily switched to alternatives like Signal or Telegram, this would be far more disruptive for new WhatsApp users in India — especially those joining through the AI wave. Most new use cases will be designed exclusively for WhatsApp, potentially jeopardizing access for semi-urban, rural, and elderly users if there’s a sudden disruption.

Even if Mark Zuckerberg (founder of Meta, which owns WhatsApp, Facebook, and Instagram) doesn’t act like Musk, it is in India’s strategic interest to safeguard its digital communication infrastructure

Recommendations

1. Open communication & interoperability —

• Similar to e-mail (SMTP) and web (HTTP), Govt. of India should influence/encourage to make Messages & groups open and interoperable with different messaging services apps with open protocols like Rich Communication Services (RCS).
• Policymakers should engage with Meta to enable such interoperability, similar to efforts in Europe. Meta has already said [3], “As required by the Digital Markets Act (DMA) people using WhatsApp and Messenger in Europe have the option to connect with people using third-party messaging services that have chosen to make their apps interoperable. We call this third-party chats. “

2. Risk Mitigation Plan –

• Non-profits, SMEs, and government departments should prepare a backup communication plan to avoid operational disruption in case of WhatsApp outages or policy changes.

In India, Chai is not dependent on any single beverage company like Starbucks or Café coffee day, etc. Chai-makers are there in every nook and corner and in all sizes. Time is right for extending the same to messaging as well!

References:

[1] https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/whatsapp-users-by-country

[2] https://www.livemint.com/technology/apps/over-15-million-in-india-use-whatsapp-business-app-every-month-11594296604818.html

[3] https://about.fb.com/news/2024/09/an-update-on-how-were-building-safe-and-secure-third-party-chats-for-users-in-europe/

[4] https://glific.org/

[5] https://csrbox.org/Impact/description/India_CSR_news_Empowering-Health-Organizations-Globally--Chat-for-Impact-Accelerator-3.0-Launches_2233

[6] https://cybernews.com/editorial/why-you-should-leave-whatsapp-for-signal-not-telegram/

[7] https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/11/20/ukraine-russia-war-internet-musk-starlink-space-x/

[8] https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1898612062533956047

Acknowledgments:

1. Chatgpt for summarizing the article in 2–3 lines and proof-reading it.

2. napkin.ai for a summary diagram