WhatsApp lists 6 biggest technological trends of 2022 – Times of India

NEW DELHI: The year is about to end and recently WhatsApp released its year-end review for 2021. Now, the instant messaging app has predicted technology trends for India for the upcoming year. WhatsApp claims that in 2022 India will become digitally inclusive and financially empowered. The year ahead will also help in bridging the gap between the urban and rural divide. According to WhatsApp, here are some trends that will shape India’s future in 2022 and beyond:
Citizen engagement and governance
This year we saw technology-driven solutions forming a key part of the government to citizen services. State-level WhatsApp chatbots played a crucial role in helping authentic information reach the masses. In 2022, we expect more innovation in effective governance and efficient citizen engagement by city and state administrations, thus lowering barriers for citizens to access credible, authentic and useful services.
Digitization of Small and Micro Businesses
Our free-of-cost WhatsApp Business App offers small and micro businesses tools and features, which can help them build a digital storefront and service their customers better. 15 million businesses in India rely on WhatsApp’s Business App to connect with their customers better. Additionally, this digitisation has offered entrepreneurs across India, especially women in rural India democratized access to customer bases and helps them grow and scale their business, further bridging the gender digital divide.
Multilingual Chatbots
In order to improve localisation efforts and broaden their reach, adopting multilingual chatbots will become vital for businesses to succeed in a geographically and linguistically diverse country like India.
Digital payments
The collective goal for players in the payments ecosystem will be to scale financial inclusion through a seamless and frictionless payments experience by (a) enabling access to digital payments, digital banking services, micro-finance and (b) promoting easy and secure transactions with service providers and businesses. ‘Payments on WhatsApp’ we believe can be a key partner to NPCI and RBI in achieving our shared objective of scaling the adoption of UPI and enabling financial inclusion for the underserved.
Services with simple UX/ UI will scale the fastest
The number of internet users in rural India is set to surpass the urban areas by 2025. Products and services with a simple UI/ UX that take away tech-inhibition and effectively lower barriers to mobile internet adoption will be the ones to scale across unserved and marginalized communities, helping to further speed up the digitization of the Indian economy.
Traditional sectors will go the digital route
In the future, sectors like education, healthcare, banking and financial services have the opportunity to scale their services and reach India’s rural population, using transformative technologies that are efficient and cost-effective such as the WhatsApp Business Platform, truly building an inclusive India.
Business Messaging
In 2022, we will see an increased reliance on AI-driven customer service that will help drive business efficiencies and improve customer engagement. Businesses will find newer ways to stay connected with their customers through innovative and immersive formats enabled by technologies like the WhatsApp Business platform.