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WhatsApp owns India! - by Dharmesh Ba

substack.com · 2,840 words · saved by 1 readers

Over the past 18 months, I poured lakhs of rupees and time into building automation tools on top of WhatsApp - and failed. That failure opened up something bigger: a look into the tangled web that holds up India’s messaging infrastructure. This is everything good, bad, and quietly dangerous about WhatsApp - and our growing dependence on it. It’s quite a long read. In 2023, I met a cosmetic store owner in Nagpur who had accidentally invented demand forecasting. He sells beauty products - Korean serums, Indian sunscreens, foreign moisturizers. His challenge wasn’t competition or pricing. It was more existential: his shelf space could hold maybe 200 SKUs, but his customers now wanted access to 2,000. Ten years ago, this wasn’t a problem. A woman would walk into his store, and he’d guide her. “Try this Lakmé sunscreen. Let me show you how to apply it.” He hired young women specifically for this - people who could explain products, who could teach. But Instagram changed the game. Women no l

India’s most used business software isn’t chosen - it’s tolerated. Over the past 18 months, I poured lakhs of rupees and time into building automation tools on top of WhatsApp - and failed. That failure opened up something bigger: a look into the tangled web that holds up India’s messaging infrastructure. This is everything good, bad, and quietly dangerous about WhatsApp - and our growing dependence on it. It’s quite a long read. If you’re a VC, founder, or policymaker exploring how deeply WhatsApp runs through India’s digital economy - or how we might build beyond it - I’d love to talk.…

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