WhatsApp now has 200 million users in India

WhatsApp has conquered the Indian messaging market.

WhatsApp usage is ubiquitous in India, and the latest numbers back it up. The Facebook-owned messaging platform has crossed 200 million users from the subcontinent, a drastic uptick from the 160 million it boasted just three months ago.

WhatsApp co-founder Brian Acton is in the country to meet with IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad to discuss the platform's role in commercial messaging and digital payments solutions. With the recent demonetisation drive, customers have flocked to mobile wallets, with local services integrating with WhatsApp to facilitate money transfers through the messaging platform:

India is a very important country to us, and we're proud to have 200 million people who use WhatsApp to connect with their friends, family and communities. We build every WhatsApp feature to be simple, reliable, and secure, and this vision is in line with what Digital India promises to achieve.

We will continue to invest so we can help more people across India, and we hope to contribute more to India's vision for digital commerce in the future.

Given WhatsApp's availability on all mobile platforms and its ability to work on slow internet connections, it's unlikely that there will be a rival service that will dethrone the messaging app in India anytime soon. With the service adding voice and video calls and the ability to post ephemeral status updates, it is slowly turning into an all-in-one communications platform, and an indispensable one at that.