How WhatsApp became the world’s ‘everything app’
From its private messaging focus, WhatsApp’s acquisition by Meta has seen it expand into a business platform, e-commerce and more.
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This article was originally published in Rest of World, which covers technology’s impact outside the West.
Shivika Sabharwal’s nerves kicked in the second she spotted the size of the crowd. It was mid-September, and Sabharwal was standing center stage inside a massive event space at Mumbai’s extravagant Jio World Convention Centre. The space, which had recently hosted the star-studded wedding between billionaire heirs Anant Ambani and Radhika Merchant, had been transformed into a sea of green – green spotlights, green archways, a neon-green light display — in honor of WhatsApp’s first business summit in India.
Around 1,000 lanyard-wearing executives had shown up for the event, and all eyes were trained on Sabharwal.
The relatively introverted 32-year-old is a professional ceramist and not a tech expert. But she was the perfect messenger for the story that WhatsApp’s parent company, Meta, has been increasingly eager to tell: how businesses of all sizes are using its messaging app to grow.
Standing on stage alongside her father and business partner, Sabharwal explained how she started her company, Shivika Pottery Gallery, out of her home on the outskirts of Delhi. In the early days, she advertised her creations to her personal network from her own WhatsApp account. But as her business expanded, she...
