What if WhatsApp wildly withdraws?
WhatsApp has pervasively conquered global communication medium with users surpassing 314 crores. This is about 60% of global population of age between 10 to 80 years. As WhatsApp completed its 15th anniversary on 24th February 2025, it is interesting to know if any risks are looming.
The ex-yahoo team and founders of WhatsApp did research for 4 months to launch the first version in year 2009 and hooked 250 users within their friend circle. Immediately in a couple of months, 2nd version was designed for iPhone users. This saw active users of WhatsApp quickly increase to 250,000. Within 2 years from then, WhatsApp bagged comfortable levels of venture capital funding. Also came offers of acquisition from more many companies including IT majors such as Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft. However, WhatsApp founders had wisely declined.
By year 2014, WA had 500 million users with speedy addition of 1 million users a day. WA was widely present in developing countries where Facebook (now Meta) had very little presence. As per the business intelligence insights Facebook obtained, Facebook had huge business threat from WA which is instant mobile message service with incredible features.
To neutralize the impact and to derive synergies, in year 2014, Facebook acquired WA for $19 billion the largest deal in this space. At the time of acquisition, Facebook had 140 crore users against WhatsApp’s 50 crore users. WhatsApp had revenue of $30 million with loss of $250 million whereas Facebook had $7.8 billion revenue.
Post acquisition of WhatsApp, and due to rapid market expansion and several improvised features on its own as well, Facebook grew faster and presently has 335 crore users. As of year 2024, the revenue to Facebook from WA is $1.8 billion and total revenue of Meta group is $165 billion and expected to touch $200 billion for year 2025.
The checking rate for emails in a day is about 20% whereas for WhatsApp communications it is 99% and that too 80% almost instantly. Billions of persons have started using WhatsApp widely and due to this email very rarely. Many persons in rural areas who do not have email or who do not know how to operate email are experts in using WhatsApp operating many features as well.
The ease of usage of WhatsApp are strikingly visible. In an unpaid version, documents up to 2 GB, and Photos and videos up to 16MB can be instantly transmitted through WhatsApp. About 70 crore persons in India use WhatsApp which is 99% of the total smartphones in India.
There is no limit per day or per annum or number of usages or messages in WhatsApp. Huge size file transmission, instant delivery, identification of delivery and reading, flexibility to send to multiple recipients, etc are the dominant reasons. It is understood that in India, the average time spent by smartphone user in WhatsApp is about 4 hours and there are persons who spend about 10 hours in a day as well. About 45% of friendships, love, and acquaintances are either made or broken through WhatsApp. On an average, every person is in at least 5 to 12 WhatsApp groups. Two in three are admins in at least one WhatsApp group. WhatsApp became way of life and human culture.
The usage of WhatsApp is in all circles including personal, business, informal and even in government offices. Governments of Odisha, Andhra Pradesh, and Kerala states in India have officially tied up with WhatsApp and have formalized the usage. Governments in few other countries including UK are directly using WhatsApp for their official purposes. In countries such as India, about 85% of business documents are floating through WhatsApp. About 35% of business activities or commercial communications are now critically dependent on WhatsApp. There are few alternatives to WhatsApp such as Signal, Telegram, Discord, Viber, Threema, Wire, Element, Spike, Botim, etc, but they are very far off to holistically compete with WhatsApp. ?
It is conceivable that for any reason if WhatsApp withdraws, rural people and people with only elementary education will be the most afflicted. More than that, the communication lines around the world including in almost all the government offices suffer very hugely. The transmission of documents in government offices and the overall works of government will delay beyond imagination. There are no near signs of looming risks, but such a huge dependence and concentration on one medium is surely an unwise thing whether it is for the governments or for anyone in the world.
Disclaimer:
Dr. Kishore Nuthalapati is an Economist and a Corporate Finance Professional. Dr. Kishore is serving as the CFO of BEKEM Infra Projects Pvt Ltd, Hyderabad, India. Views are his personal and do not reflect those of any of the organizations he is or was associated with.