WhatsApp’s largest market has become its toughest test

WhatsApp, the meta messaging app that millions of Indians rely on daily, is facing a critical moment in India as recent government directives threaten to disrupt how the platform works for everyday users and businesses.

Released late last month and Announce Earlier this month, guidelines required some app-based calling services to keep accounts permanently linked to an active SIM card and imposed stricter controls on how apps work across devices.

New Delhi says these measures aim to reduce the increasing cyber fraud in India, the world’s most populous country. However, digital advocacy groups, policy experts, and industry groups representing major digital platforms — including Meta — have warned that this approach risks regulatory overreach and could disrupt legitimate use, especially in a country where WhatsApp has evolved into a daily infrastructure for personal communications and small business commerce.

The guidelines, which app providers including Meta, Telegram and Signal must comply with within 90 days of their release on November 28, require messaging apps to remain linked to the SIM card used when registering. The web and desktop versions of these apps also require users to log out every six hours and relink their devices via a QR code to regain access.

“Mandatory persistent SIM linking and periodic log-out ensures that every active account and web session is linked to a KYC-verified live SIM, restoring traceability to numbers used in phishing, investment, digital arrest and loan scams,” the Ministry of Telecom said in a press release earlier this month, adding that India suffered cyber fraud losses exceeding INR 228 billion (about $2.5 billion) in 2024 alone.

The Indian government clarified that the rules do not apply when the SIM card remains in the device, and the user is roaming.

While the directives apply broadly to major instant messaging apps, WhatsApp is likely to feel their impact more acutely. Used by more than 500 million people In India. Adoption of the app in India is also unusually deep. As much as 94% of WhatsApp’s monthly user base in India opened the app daily in November, while 67% of WhatsApp Business users in the country did the same, according to Sensor Tower data shared with TechCrunch. In comparison, 59% of monthly WhatsApp users in the US open the app daily, along with 57% to use WhatsApp Business.

Many merchants in India rely on WhatsApp Business — a smartphone-based version of the service designed specifically for small businesses — where they typically register the account on a SIM-linked phone while handling customer conversations through WhatsApp’s web or desktop client on another device. Unlike the big companies that use… WhatsApp Business APIs As for automated communications associated with Customer Relationship Management (CRM), these small businesses can reach their customers through WhatsApp Business and its accompanying web interface, which means that mandatory SIM linking and frequent forced registrations can disrupt the workflow of receiving orders, support and customer engagement.

The potential disruption in India comes as WhatsApp has been steadily expanding its services Multi-device and Companion device capabilities, allowing users and businesses to stay logged in across phones, browsers and devices without relying on a single active smartphone.

Rapid expansion into deep trenching

The directives come as WhatsApp is undergoing a major transformation in India, its largest market, with growth increasingly driven by retention of existing users rather than rapid expansion of a new user base.

The number of monthly active WhatsApp users in India on mobile devices rose 6% year-on-year in the fourth quarter so far, even as downloads fell by nearly 49%, according to Sensor Tower data shared with TechCrunch. Compared to late 2022, the number of monthly active users of WhatsApp in India rose by 24%, while downloads fell by 14% during the same period, the market intelligence company said.

“It would be fair to say that the number of users (MAU) growth of WhatsApp in India over the past few years has been driven more by retention (successfully re-engaging existing or previous users) rather than acquisition of new users,” said Abraham Yousef, Senior Insights Analyst at Sensor Tower.

Data from Appfigures shows that WhatsApp Business has consistently recorded more estimated debut installs than WhatsApp Messenger in India since early 2024, reflecting how growth has been increasingly driven by merchant adoption rather than broad consumer expansion.

Part of this pattern reflects how WhatsApp is used in India, said Randy Nelson, head of insights at Appfigures. It’s common for merchants to maintain separate WhatsApp identities for personal and customer communications, often enabled by dual-SIM phones, while a single business can create multiple installations across employee and store devices.

Sensor tower data points in the same direction. The number of monthly active users of WhatsApp Business in India is still growing year-on-year in late 2025, and is up more than 130% compared to 2021, far outpacing WhatsApp Messenger’s growth of nearly 34% over the same period, according to market intelligence company data estimates.

While overall engagement is still higher on WhatsApp — with Indian users opening the app daily and spending an average of 38 minutes a day in November, compared to 27 minutes on WhatsApp Business — the gap looks different in the US, where users spend about 23 minutes a day on WhatsApp and 27 minutes on WhatsApp Business, according to Sensor Tower estimates.

India’s guidance raises ‘serious questions about technical feasibility’

In a statement last week, industry body Broadband India Forum (BIF), which includes Meta, said the measures could lead to “material inconvenience and disruption of service to ordinary users”, adding that they raise “serious questions about technical feasibility”.

The directives hinge on a still-contested new classification of telecommunications identifier user entities (TIUEs) under India’s telecom cybersecurity rules, effectively placing messaging apps within the telecommunications framework — a shift from their traditional regulation under the country’s IT law — through executive directives rather than formal legislation, said Kazim Rizvi, founding director of New Delhi-based public policy think tank The Dialogue.

“The directives derive their strength not from law but from delegated legislation,” Rizvi told TechCrunch. “Furthermore, the lack of public consultation or technical working groups threatens to create friction over compliance without addressing the underlying fraud drivers.”

The Indian Ministry of Communications did not respond to a request for comment.

For now, companies including Meta have limited scope to challenge the guidance in court, according to technology policy experts.

Challenging trends typically requires showing that they either go beyond the scope of substantive law or violate constitutional protections, a lofty goal that may be difficult to achieve in this case, said Dhruv Garg, a technology policy consultant and partner at the Indian Governance and Policy Project.

Meta declined to comment for this article.