Ever wondered the way a messaging app could make money while offering free texting and calling? WhatsApp users within India could be surprised to know there is more to messaging apps than communicating. Here is how: by providing services such as digital payments, online shopping and also content.
Apps Similar To 's WeChat is one of the perfect example of the great opportunity that messaging apps hold. With over Nine hundred million monthly active users, WeChat assists them do almost everything from messaging, purchasing grocery, hailing cabs, buying online food as well as offline payments at restaurants - all this without needing to go to another app. These types of services not merely offer the company outstanding customer stickiness, additionally they create a remarkable revenue model.
For now, WeChat's competition outside China including WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Skype, Viber and Line are behind the curve on this front, even though some have started on the way to becoming larger platforms. "The reason chat apps are widening beyond communications is to create a sustainable monetisation strategy," said Neha Dharia, a senior analyst with a focus on messaging at London-based research firm Ovum. "Chat apps are shifting away from being merely a provider of communication tools chat, voice and also video) to being a platform for the exchange of services, payment mechanisms as well as content consumption."
WhatsApp, the largest messaging app on the planet with 1.3 billion monthly active users, introduced a business version in India early on this week. "Based on research, we realize that people are utilizing WhatsApp to speak to businesses.
make business messaging more convenient for folks and more effective for businesses," a WhatsApp spokesperson said in response to ET's questions. Whatsapp Business is a separate app from Whatsapp Messenger, aimed mostly at giving a direct communicating platform to smaller businesses, a lot of who might be using WhatsApp already.

While Whatsapp has placed the service free, it could extend it to larger businesses with added features for example analytics, by which it could charge a usage fee at a later stage, as a result creating a revenue model, segment watchers said. This also is aimed at raising subscriber connect which it can make use of for future monetization of its other services. The greater agenda - and a more important one - for these corporations is to get active users to invest far more time on the app or services and make it viable for revenue generation, according to experts.
"Each and every technology company is competing for consumer stickiness, interaction and time spent on the app, and in order to keep them around the app's ecosystem they are widening themselves to turn into platforms. Just being messaging applications that offer free services won't be a good revenuegeneration model," said Jayanth Kolla, founding father of Bengaluru-based research firm Convergence Catalyst.