Indians shared 20 billion messages via WhatsApp on New Year eve

WhatsApp users in India have sent over 20 billion messages on December 31 while greeting their near and dear ones. According to a company statement, 75 billion messages globally shared on New Year’s Eve via the messaging app, out of which 27 per cent (20 billion) messages were sent from India.

Currently, India is the biggest market for WhatsApp with more than 200 million monthly active users. For two years in a row, it became most downloaded application on Google Play Store in India. The messaging App has hit more than 1 billion daily usages mark in July last year.

Out of 75 billion messages sent, 13 billion were images and 5 billion videos. The instant messaging app recorded this data is only for 12 am to 11:59 pm PST on December 31, reports Gadgets 360.

Importantly, many WhatsApp users in India were disappointed on January 1 as the messaging app experienced a brief (for about an hour) outage.

Social media giant Facebook, which kept WhatsApp out of the revenue-churning loop, had launched WhatsApp Business to monetize it in September 2017.

At present,  it’s building and testing new tools for small companies and an enterprise solution for bigger companies operating at a large scale with a global base of customers, like airlines, e-commerce sites, and banks.

Companies such as BookMyShow, Oyo, and Netflix amongst many others have partnered Whatsapp Business for early phase.

The messaging app will have three different types of business accounts, that are likely to be present on its platform, and how users can identify them, in the new FAQ.

In February, the company's co-founder Brian Acton visited India in order to gather insights from people on how messaging app can contribute to the country in a more prominent way. WhatsApp is also looking for a digital payments entry in the country through UPI integration soon.