Meta in India

The social media giant is growing its tiny foothold in an up-and-coming country with a versatile, free messaging app, and apparently no one is impressed

• Meta is conquering new lands, but no one seems to care (because Meta is doing other, more important things, apparently

• WhatsApp Business is an Indian rocketship

• MetaAI’s biggest power user (and still no one cares)

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Meta in India

Random Walk has been curious about Facebook’s Meta’s growing presence in India for a while, specifically WhatsApp.

It’s interesting for a few reasons, including that it’s cool to watch a massive techco with bajillions in advertising revenue slowly figure out how to monetize a very popular, but free, messaging app (that in many respects is built around the opposite value proposition: hiding from the watchful eyes of advertisers).

It’s also interesting to observe what happens when a fully-mature social media product parachutes into a population that’s still-digitally-coming-of-age (albeit very rapidly). In other words, we grew up alongside WhatsApp’s maturation. India is coming online with WhatsApp as a sherpa.

Lastly, Meta-in-India is interesting from a conquering-new-lands perspective. For companies to grow, it’s helpful to find large, untapped markets that are also growing. China was that for a while, but is no longer. India is definitely that. The fact that Meta has a growing toe-hold in India is therefore a thing to watch.

Anyways, Meta announced a bang up quarter yesterday, and investors were pleased:

That’s some pretty strong after-hours action.

Investors were pleased because, like other haters of the Meta-in-India thesis, their focus is on Meta’s core business: selling ads, and ad revenue was good. India? Who cares?! It’s a rounding error.

True.

But Random Walk ignores the haters because it’s the India part that’s interesting, and while the street doesn’t seem to care, the company made a point of mentioning it twice.

WhatsApp Business, the king of Other

First, Meta’s CFO took a moment to celebrate the “other” revenue category of its Family of Apps:

Family of Apps other revenue was $389,000,000 up 73%, driven primarily by business messaging revenue growth from our WhatsApp Business platform.

That’s 73% yoy growth driven primarily by WhatsApp Business, which is primarily in India (as best as I can tell).

Look at this rocket ship: