‘The future of commerce is conversational and Gen AI will be a gamechanger'

New Indian Express

01-05-2025

The future of commerce is conversational as people are messaging businesses and they want in real-time, convenient, and personalised conversations. 'And they want it all within the app they already use. WhatsApp, in particular, is at the heart of this transformation. Globally, 1 billion people message a business every week. Every day, we see over 600 million conversations between people and businesses on our platforms. In India, which is one of our largest markets, more than 60% of people on WhatsApp message a business account every single week — a clear sign that conversational platforms are becoming the new storefront,' Ravi Garg, Director, Business Messaging, Meta in India, told TNIE.
From managing orders to offering personalised customer service within a WhatsApp chat, small businesses have started using the WhatsApp Business app. 'It's not just businesses embracing WhatsApp — consumers, too, are increasingly seeking real-time, conversational interactions with businesses.. Whether it's accessing banking services, buying groceries, or raising service requests, people want convenience and immediacy in their conversations with a business,' he said.
To meet the demand, it introduced the WhatsApp Business Platform for large businesses. Businesses are building end-to-end solutions on WhatsApp by combining automation, AI, and personalisation.
Garg points out that IndiGo has launched 6Eskai, its AI-powered conversational assistant on WhatsApp. 6Eskai enables customers to book tickets, check in, get boarding passes, track flights, and resolve queries via text or voice in English, Hindi, and Tamil. 'Today, customers also want multiple options in how they chat with a business, especially when they have complicated travel requests or want to discuss opening a new account with their bank, a quick call can be the best way to get help,' he said.
To address this, they are introducing the ability for people to now call businesses using the WhatsApp Business Platform with a quick tap. It has started testing this feature and will expand it to more businesses in the coming months.
Talking about Gen AI, he said the next phase of growth is Generative AI. 'Nearly 95% of enterprises in India are familiar with GenAI, and over 80% plan to invest in it in the next 1–2 years. As GenAI gets embedded into conversational platforms, it will power smarter automation, unlock personalization at scale, and help businesses communicate across languages and markets more effortlessly than ever before,' Garg said.
When asked how it is leveraging AI? Garg said they started by making it easy to activate AI directly from the WhatsApp Business app to help businesses more efficiently engage with their customers.
'We started testing this here in India with a very small number of businesses and the early results are really exciting. We'll start rolling this out to many more businesses here in India in the coming weeks,' he said.
As any small business continues to grow, it often faces a challenge of managing a high volume of customer inquiries due to resource constraints. This is where GenAI will be a gamechanger and this is where we are testing the ability for a business to activate AI in their chats with customers to provide support and help sell their goods and services, he added.