Video streaming major Netflix has been testing WhatsApp Business integration in India to communicate with its subscribers. The integration is largely meant for sending messages, and personalised content suggestion to subscribers through notification.
Social media giant Facebook, which has so far kept WhatsApp out of the revenue-churning loop, now is monetizing it through Whatsapp Business. It will essentially allow small businesses to send targeted messages and videos.
In September, WhatsApp had officially announced that it is working out ways to connect its users with the businesses. Online ticketing brand BookMyShow had announced in the same month that it is one of the brands in India participating in the WhatsApp business pilot.
MakeMyTrip and Goibibo are some of the brands that are part of this pilot in India. Cab-hailing firm Ola, hotel rooms aggregator OYO and airlines Spicejet and Indigo are companies, with whom instant messaging app had held discussion for business collaboration.
Businesses can mention important information such as address, business hours and description of their offering and help them manage consumer chats. Currently, WhatsApp is not charging for the aforementioned services, however, it plans to charge businesses for it.
In India, WhatsApp has over 200 million active monthly users or over 15 per cent of WhatsApp’s total user base, this year. At present, Netflix sends the content suggestion to its subscribers through email or text message. WhatsApp will help Netflix to grow its user base, and most importantly engage effectively with them.
Meanwhile, the instant messaging app is also slated to integrate Unified Payment Interface (UPI) for enabling payment for various services through the app. Going forward, it would be interesting to see how WhatsApp will integrate UPI layer with tools it’s building for businesses.
Currently, the messaging App is the leading player in the messaging space, followed by Facebook Messenger that crossed a billion monthly users in July and Tencent’s WeChat that has 938 million monthly active users as of May 2017.
