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:
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