WhatsApp, the uber popular instant messaging app, have now crossed 50 million subscribers in India and from the looks of it the speed of their growth is only accelerating. They have now forged a tie-up with India’s largest mobile service provider Bharti Airtel to offer special plans for their subscribers.
As per the latest report Airtel has 205 million mobile subscribers in their fold. The new data packs launched by them are exclusively for WhatsApp usage. Given the popularity of WhatsApp among Indian users, these packs would be very attractive to users.
The WhatsApp packs offer 200 mb of WhatsApp data for one month and the price of packs ranges from Rs. 36 to Rs. 49 depending on the subscriber’s circle. Here are the prices based on various circles.
If you look at the plans, Mumbai is the most expensive at Rs. 49, while Jammu & Kashmir has the cheapest at Rs. 36.
To activate the plans on your mobile, users will have to SMS ‘Whatsapp’ to 121. You can find more details on these plans here.
WhatsApp Growth
Last month WhatsApp had announced that they have crossed 500 million subscriber mark globaly and are adding over 25 million new users every month. With these kind of partnerships, that growth is only going to accelerate further.
In India, WhatsApp already provides similar plans with Tata Docomo, Reliance Communication and Uninor.
Though number of instant messaging apps are available in the market including India’s Hike messenger, Japanese LINE messenger, WeChat, Viber & others, WhatsApp has been far ahead of them in terms of sheer number of subscribers.
Facebook’s $19 billion acquisition is justified after all!