Indian Startup BookMyShow To Work With WhatsApp For Business

Indian startup BookMyShow, biggest online ticketing platform, has officially announced that they will be working with WhatsApp For Business to send ticket confirmation messages to users. It is the first Indian startup brand to participate in the WhatsApp business pilot which lets businesses share contextual information and interact with customers directly.

In a blog post titled ‘Building for People and Now Businesses,’ WhatsApp announced their pilot program to open up its messaging platform for businesses on 5 September. As a part of the program, BookMyShow will be able to use the messaging platform as a default ticket confirmation channel for all its users.

Speaking about the collaboration, BookMyShow’s Head of Product Ravdeep Chawla said, “WhatsApp has definitely become a preferred mode of communication for millions of people in our country and we could identify tremendous value in making it a default ticket confirmation channel.” The online ticketing platform recently also launched an in app chat box called ‘Plan-It.’ The feature allows friends and families to interact with each other in real time, suggest movies, show times, venue options and complete the ticket booking from within the chat window itself.

WhatsApp is seeking to monetize its platform using the WhatsApp for Businesses venture by authenticating businesses with a green verified badge next to the name. According to a report by a news daily, several Indian startups like online pharmacy 1mg along with global startups such as Dutch airline KLM and Itau Bank in Brazil were part of early pilots for WhatsApp Business. Companies part of the WhatsApp for Businesses program will have access to two application programming interfaces (API) which can be leveraged by the companies to contact customers, send information or confirmation messages.

According to various media reports, WhatsApp is also planning to enter the digital payments platform in India with a Unified Payments Interface integrated payments app. Global technology giant Google has also developed an online payments application called ‘Tez’ specifically for the Indian market which will also include support for UPI and other consumer payment services such as Paytm and MobiKwik.