At a recent event titled “India’s Consumer Over the Next Decade,” Sandhya Devanathan, Vice President & Head of Meta India, shared how Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, is making significant investments in India, focusing on three key areas: artificial intelligence (AI), business messaging, and meeting consumers where they are—especially through short-form video content.
At the recent session titled “India’s Consumers Over the Next Decade,” hosted by Business Today, Sandhya Devanathan, Vice President & Head of Meta India, delivered a powerful vision for how businesses in India can drive growth by embracing three major digital shifts—AI, business messaging, and the creator economy.
The session was started by acknowledging the unprecedented pace of digital adoption in India. With millions of Indians coming online and using mobile-first tech, India isn’t just going digital fast—it’s leading the way.
Meta sees India as one of its most important markets—not just for users, but for shaping how digital business will grow next.
“India is leading the world in digital adoption, and businesses here are innovating at an incredible scale. Meta’s role is to enable this momentum with tools that combine AI, messaging, and content—so brands can grow meaningfully and inclusively.”
Why is India Important for Meta?
We’ve been closely watching Meta’s moves—because their apps are how most people in India connect with businesses today.
From chatting to scrolling, Meta is everywhere.
India is Meta’s biggest market in the world. Why? Because India has a huge number of mobile users, cheap internet, and people who love using social media.
While China isn’t part of Meta’s growth story—apps like WhatsApp, Facebook, and Instagram are banned there and that also makes India even more important for Meta.
As SMS fades out, WhatsApp is becoming the main way businesses talk to their customers—for updates, support, and even shopping. On the social media side, Instagram is leading, while Facebook is still strong, especially in smaller cities.
For brands in India, this is a big chance to reach people where they already are.
With this strong presence across touchpoints, Meta’s announcements always give us a sense of where digital marketing is heading next. Here’s a quick look at the top 3 things Meta talked about—and what we should be excited about going forward.
Table of Contents
1. How AI is Helping Indian Businesses Grow?
The session was started by highlighting the transformative power of Artificial Intelligence. AI is no longer a buzzword or a futuristic vision—it is actively shaping how businesses function today.
1.1 Simplifying Performance Marketing with Advantage+
Meta’s AI tools, such as Advantage+ shopping campaigns, are designed to simplify performance marketing. These tools use AI to automate ad creation, testing, and optimization—making it easier for marketers to focus on outcomes rather than operations.
For example, with Advantage+, marketers can input basic creatives and let the system generate multiple variations, test them in real time, and allocate budgets to the best-performing versions. This not only saves time but significantly improves ROI.
1.2 Generative AI: Scaling Campaigns Without the Creative Overhead
Meta is building tools that use GenAI to automatically generate ad copy, images, and calls-to-action, which is helping businesses rapidly scale campaigns without increasing their creative overhead.
These AI features allow brands—even small businesses without a creative agency—to run campaigns with the same level of sophistication as large enterprises.
Importantly, the speaker also discussed open-source Llama models, and said that Meta’s large language models are now being embraced by developers and businesses in India. The fact that these models are open-source means they are accessible to anyone, not just tech giants.
This democratization is vital in India, where thousands of startups and regional businesses can now experiment with AI, build their own tools, and localize them for vernacular languages and local consumer behaviors.
1.3 India’s Role: Not Just Adopting AI—But Building It
India is not just consuming AI solutions but actively building them. From retail to edtech, businesses are already seeing how AI can personalize user experiences, recommend products, and even automate customer support. Meta’s role is to equip these businesses with the tools and platforms they need to harness AI’s full potential.
“AI is enabling businesses to do more with less. It’s helping them reach the right audience, with the right creativity, at the right time—with far less effort than before.”
2. Why is Business Messaging Becoming the New Normal?
The second theme explored by Meta was business messaging, which was described as “one of the most profound behavior shifts we are seeing in India.”
People have moved from emails to messaging apps to talk with friends and family, they now expect the same seamless, instant interactions with businesses. Whether it’s tracking an order, getting product recommendations, or resolving issues, customers increasingly prefer chat-based interactions over calls or emails.
India is the largest market in the world for WhatsApp, making it a natural frontrunner in the rise of conversational commerce. Businesses across sectors—retail, banking, education, travel—are now setting up shop within messaging apps. For many small businesses, WhatsApp isn’t just a channel—it’s their entire storefront.
More than 600 million conversations happen daily between people and businesses on Meta platforms globally, and a significant chunk of that volume comes from India.
These aren’t just support chats—they include sales inquiries, service bookings, and even completed purchases. People are now discovering products, asking questions, and transacting—all within a single chat window.
2.1 Real Life Examples of Business Messaging
A good example is the Mana Mitra initiative by the Andhra Pradesh government. It consolidates over 200 citizen services—like temple bookings, electricity bill payments, and birth certificate requests—into one WhatsApp chatbot. Within a week of launch, over 2 million people had already used it.
Another example is the partnership with the Maharashtra and Odisha governments.
In Mumbai, 50% of metro tickets are now sold through WhatsApp, drastically reducing waiting times and simplifying the process for commuters.
As more government and private services move to platforms like WhatsApp, Meta is integrating advanced features such as payments (including UPI) and AI-powered chatbots.
2.2 Redefining the Funnel with Conversational Commerce
With the rise of the WhatsApp Business Platform, even large enterprises can automate and personalize their communication through bots, CRM tools, and APIs. For example, a travel brand can now send a customer their itinerary, upsell travel insurance, and offer a 24×7 chatbot—all within WhatsApp.
From a growth perspective, this behavior shift is redefining what a “conversion funnel” looks like.
“A chat is no longer just a touchpoint—it’s a destination,”
This also means marketing is no longer about broadcasting messages, but about being present where conversations happen and driving actions in the moment.
3. How Are Reels and Creators Helping Brands Reach Consumers Where They Spend Time?
The third big area of focus for Meta is reaching consumers through the content formats they prefer—specifically short-form video.
Platforms like Instagram and Facebook are seeing massive growth in Reels, Meta’s answer to TikTok and YouTube Shorts.
India has become the largest market globally for Reels.
Every day, 4.5 billion Reels are reshared across Meta’s platforms, with 200 billion Reels viewed daily across Facebook and Instagram globally.
Half of all time spent on Instagram is now on Reels. This shows a fundamental shift in user behavior—from long-form to short-form content.
This change in content consumption patterns has major implications for businesses. To stay relevant, brands need to embrace short videos not just for engagement but also for storytelling, product demos, and even customer testimonials.
Reels also provide a powerful way to partner with creators, who are now playing a key role in the marketing ecosystem. Consumers trust creators more than traditional ads, and Meta’s platform helps brands tap into this trust to build credibility and drive action.
Meta’s ongoing investment in improving Reels and supporting creators shows their commitment to helping businesses tap into this cultural shift. They’re not just following trends—they’re shaping them.
3.1 What This Means for Brands?
If you’re a business operating in India, here are the key takeaways:
- Use AI tools: Meta’s GenAI can save you time and boost ad performance. Take advantage of tools like Advantage+ to automate creative production and campaign optimization.
- Embrace messaging: Whether it’s for customer service, marketing, or transactions, messaging is becoming a preferred channel. WhatsApp is where your customers are—meet them there.
- Invest in short-form content: Reels are driving massive engagement. Don’t miss the opportunity to tell your brand story in 15–30 seconds. Collaborate with creators for wider reach.
- Stay ahead with innovation: AI-powered chatbots, integrated payments, and voice support are the future. They can help you reach new markets, especially in underserved areas.
4. Conclusion
In closing, Meta emphasized that AI, business messaging, and creators are not isolated tools—they are interconnected levers that Indian businesses can use to scale in the digital age. They represent deep, irreversible behavior shifts. And with the right strategy and tools, any business—from a D2C startup to a legacy brand—can ride this wave.
Meta is committed to building platforms and tools that help Indian businesses adapt to these changes—across urban metros and rural towns alike. Whether it’s automating ad campaigns, scaling customer service via chat, or collaborating with creators to launch a campaign, the future of business growth is already here.
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“The way India is growing, innovating, and creating—it’s not just inspiring. It’s leading the way for the world.”
Meta’s emphasis on AI is fascinating, especially in the context of India’s rapidly growing digital ecosystem. It’ll be interesting to see how AI-driven tools can help businesses here scale even faster.
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