India is now the top market for WhatsApp with 160 million monthly active users. The company, which was acquired in 2014 by Facebook, has launched several new features in the last one year, including voice calling. On Tuesday, WhatsApp picked New Delhi to do a global launch of its video calling services that will allow users to see each while chatting. WhatsApp also had its share of controversy after a recent announcement where it said that user account details would be shared with Facebook. While many critics have raised concerns around privacy, others have questioned if WhatsApp post the acquisition would change its original mission. BusinessLine met Neeraj Arora, Head of Business, WhatsApp, to talk about these issues and more. Edited excerpts:

India is now the largest market for you in terms of user base. What does this mean for you?

I’ve been with the company for the last 5 years and I’ve seen the company and product evolve but the core of it has always been let’s have a great service which is very utilitarian and simple. We now have more than a billion monthly active users (MAUs) globally. Within India we have more than 160 million MAUs which is very special for us because India has seen great uptake in the service and usage in the last 3-4 years. We now have more users in India than any other country in the world. India has adopted WhatsApp like we couldn’t imagine.

India is predominantly a 2G country still. What is your strategy to ensure growth in a market where internet bandwidth will be an issue for the next 3-4 years?

When we started building WhatsApp the internet connections were not that great. Our product was built from day one thinking about 2G users. For example, when you send a picture we trim down the resolution so it goes really fast. I’ve heard people say that in a really bad network, the only thing that connects is WhatsApp. Any feature we add, our engineers make sure that these work in such conditions.

Your parent Facebook also a messenger platform. How do you differentiate?

Both are great products and have done well in different parts of the world. While Messenger is based on your FB friends list, WhatsApp is based on your phone address book. Both are separate products and FB does well to keep it that way. The choice is with the user.

Post acquisition by Facebook in 2014, is there a change in vision for WhatsApp?

The original vision continues to be the guiding force but one of the reasons we came together with Facebook is that there is an alignment on that vision. At the same time, being part of FB has given us more resources to do things faster and better. For example, for our voice service, we could use Facebook servers that have a better footprint and are spread out across the world. Another example is that we have taken a lot of learnings from FB on fighting spam. In addition to technical capabilities, hiring has become easier since we can tap into the great pool of engineers.

Do you see the possibility of merging WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger?

There is a flow of ideas and we learn from each other. But it doesn’t make sense for us to merge anything at this point. Products are separate but the two teams work with each other and help each other.

Is it time to think about monetisation?

Yes, it is time to think about monetisation and this year we’ve made some announcements in this regard. We are thinking about how users can connect to businesses that they care about and at the same time, we make some money. For example, an airline or a bank may want to communicate with you and if you choose to do so, we can create that experience. The choice is back with the user. We’re laying the foundation to build this and you will start seeing roll outs next year. One thing is clear, that we’re not going to show ads on WhatsApp.

Concerns have been raised about the recent move to share account info with FB...

We’re not going to compromise and privacy is important to us. But if you have some basic sharing with FB it allows us to do better on the product side. User chats are not shared, its encrypted end-to-end. The only thing we shared with FB was the account info which is the phone number. This was done to do better on the product side for example, it can provide better friend suggestions. If the user has opted in, ads will look better.

Even governments have expressed concern ….

So, we’re talking to governments and explaining where necessary. These things are new.

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