By Vallari Sanzgiri

Copyright thehindubusinessline

How has it been for you so far in this journey?

This is the culmination in some sense because I’ve done a lot of sales and marketing and institutions in the CPG industry. I’ve been fortunate also to be part of the private equity industry. Then I joined a digital native Meta where I get to do all the three. My previous experience has led me to this path so I’m truly excited.

What are your key focus points for Meta in India going forward?

India is one of our top countries. It’s our number one country for users of each of our apps. It’s also one of our top markets in terms of our large user base, innovation, and what we do with products, both from a user and creator perspective, and from a monetisation and advertisement view. Secondly, creators play an important role on our platform. Thirdly, businesses are a focus; they get discovered throughout our platforms and are able to build and monetise their communities both through our three apps. AI is going to play a critical role and is embedded across our apps. The Meta AI icon exists today in our apps, and India is one of the largest markets there in terms of daily usage.

Meta has been working with SMBs for a while. What are your key learnings and how do you see the space going forward?

As per a government data point, we have more than 60 million small businesses in the country. A lot of businesses get discovered on our apps and we’ve worked with them to build better discovery tools. We’ve launched Ads on WhatsApp status. We’re just piloting it with a few clients and with time we will take it to every large and small business. We have Gen AI tools today which actually can improve creative, so that breaks the barrier for small businesses to really compete with large businesses. Globally, more than 4 million advertisers used these AI tools in the last quarter producing 50 million creatives; they actually achieved a 12 per cent lower cost in terms of effectiveness. We now allow something called Business AI for scale support allowing a small business to compete with large businesses that have call centres.

How are you deepening the payments feature on Whatsapp, and do you think discoverability needs to be sharpened to allow users to find new brands based on location ?

It’s more about intent and searching for something with clarity. On Facebook and Instagram, it’s primarily discovery where the AI-powered engine knows that I’m surfing for travel, coffee or skincare, and provides new brands. We are trying to do the same on WhatsApp using ads and status.

On payments, we were capped initially, and we continue to figure out how we want to scale. We are playing a significant role in citizen services; for example, more than half the metro tickets in the country digitally purchased are on WhatsApp. A lot of us take an app for granted but many people only have 16-32 GB phones. How many apps will they actually keep? We find our service has saved time significantly for people. You can also buy monthly pass in some cases. Today, we have 7 million tickets, if I recall rightly, sold on Whatsapp already.

We tied up with Andhra Pradesh a few months ago for Manamitra service; 700 services are available to citizens in the State. You can do anything there from temple booking to property tax dues online. We’ve signed MoUs with three other States. In Andhra, more than 90 per cent of students appearing for their 12th exam downloaded the hall ticket using this app.