Desk : Sandhya Devanathan has spent almost two years in India as director of American social media giant Meta. During this period, the company has expanded its business by increasing consumer engagement across its Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp platforms. But amid this rapid growth, the company has also faced serious regulatory challenges.
The latest case is the fine imposed by CCI on the company alleging that it illegally shared some of WhatsApp users’ data with Instagram and Facebook for targeted advertising.
The matter is pending in court, as Meta has decided to challenge it. While giving an interview to a media outlet, Devanathan expressed his opinion on the future and challenge of Meta in India.
How has the development of social networks been in India?
India remains a very important market for META globally. This is one of the largest user markets for us and the trends we’re seeing here are definitely about continued growth and engagement across all of our platforms. It’s not just Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp but also the recently launched Threads, India is one of the largest markets globally with over 200 million downloads. We are seeing continued momentum and growth across all sectors. At the same time, we are seeing equally strong adoption of new products like the Llama AI platform.
India provides the largest user base for the Meta platform. Do you also create products that are then adopted globally?
I think we are using India as a guide globally. Consider this: India was one of the first countries to test and launch Reels in 2020 (Instagram). Today, it is one of our strongest products worldwide. India is also the first country where we launch payments on WhatsApp Business. Additionally, India is the largest market for Meta AI in terms of usage. It is one of the top three markets globally for the adoption of our open source big language AI model, Llama.
In fact, when we launched WhatsApp Flows last year, we launched it for the first time in India. Mark (Zuckerberg) had announced it. Then we take it global. This is one of the things that India is doing. Our team and I are proud of that: how we make India the hub where we innovate, where we make products and then take them globally, all because we have that scale.
I see this still happening while we do other tests. For example, we are running a test with small businesses calling via WhatsApp in India. Basically, this happens when you are chatting with a small business on WhatsApp and suddenly the chat is not enough and you want to talk to a person. This does not automatically call a company, but remains in the context of the chat. You can then call the company. This has also been done in order to give priority to India.
And can they be replicated globally?
Yes. We will now announce it globally. But its leadership, to a large extent, comes from India.
So what are other made-in-India solutions that can go global?
Today, Llama is growing globally and has more than 400 million downloads. Many of them are from India, so India is a huge market. The developers here download Llama and then create solutions, tools and everything else. So I think India is playing a very important role there too, given the size and adoption that we are seeing. India also contributes greatly to this. Even in the case of AI, India will play a very important role in terms of adoption, usage and development of Llama.
Speaking of regulation, does it seem like global companies like Meta are against regulation?
We welcome regulation, especially if it is progressive. The Digital Personal Data Protection Act was a perfect example of this for us.
