WhatsApp, which ranks among the most popular messaging app in the world, today announced that it has over 160 million monthly users in India alone. The company, owned by Facebook, also said that its global user base now stands at over 1 billion.
Neeraj Arora, WhatsApp’s Vice President of Business Development, also revealed that the the app has more active users in India than in any other country. He added that on the day of Diwali, over 8 billion messages were sent on WhatsApp, a record high for the platform for a single day.
(Also see: How to Enable Two-Step Verification on WhatsApp)
Manpreet Singh, the first WhatsApp engineer to work on bringing voice calling feature to the app, said that over 100 million voice calls are made daily using the platform.
The company also announced that it is rolling out video calls globally for Android, iOS, and Windows Phone platforms today. With this move, the video calling feature - which was in beta so far - will be available to more than 1 billion WhatsApp users.
Video calling on WhatsApp will have end-to-end encryption, meaning that it will be difficult for individuals or governments to listen in on users' private calls made using the app. WhatsApp has had end-to-end encryption for messages for a few months.
(Also see: How to Make Your First Video Call via WhatsApp)
Jan Koum, CEO and co-founder of WhatsApp and a Facebook board member, said in a statement, "Video calling is one of the most requested features from people in India. We're proud to have the opportunity to launch this feature in India, where we now have 160 million users, and we look forward to seeing people use WhatsApp to talk to their friends and loved ones face to face."
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