WhatsApp, Meta’s widely used messaging app, is at a critical juncture in India, its largest market. New government directives, issued late last month and made public earlier this month, threaten to significantly alter how the platform operates for its millions of everyday users and businesses across the country. These regulations mandate that certain app-based communication services maintain continuous links to an active SIM card and impose stricter controls on multi-device functionality.
New Delhi asserts that these measures are crucial for curbing the escalating cyber fraud in India, the world's most populous nation. However, digital advocacy groups, policy experts, and industry bodies—including Meta—have voiced concerns, warning that this approach risks regulatory overreach and could disrupt legitimate use. This is particularly problematic in India, where WhatsApp has become an essential part of daily life, serving as core infrastructure for personal communication and small-business commerce.
New Regulations and Their Rationale
The directives, which messaging app providers such as Meta, Telegram, and Signal must comply with within 90 days of their November 28 issuance, require apps to remain tied to the SIM card used during sign-up. Furthermore, the web and desktop versions of these apps will compel users to log out every six hours and re-link their devices via a QR code to regain access.
The telecom ministry justified these steps in a recent press release, stating, “Mandatory continuous SIM-device binding and periodic logout ensure that every active account and web session is anchored to a live, KYC-verified SIM, restoring traceability of numbers used in phishing, investment, digital arrest, and loan scams.” The ministry highlighted the urgency, noting that India suffered cyber-fraud losses exceeding ₹228 billion (approximately $2.5 billion) in 2024 alone. The government has clarified that these rules do not apply when the SIM remains in the device and the user is roaming.
WhatsApp's Deep Entrenchment and Potential Disruption
While these new directions apply broadly to major instant messaging apps, their impact is expected to be most profoundly felt by WhatsApp. The app boasts over 500 million users in India, and its adoption runs unusually deep. Sensor Tower data shared with TechCrunch indicates that in November, a remarkable 94% of WhatsApp’s Indian monthly user base opened the app daily, with 67% of WhatsApp Business users doing the same. In contrast, daily usage in the U.S. stood at 59% for WhatsApp and 57% for WhatsApp Business.
Many Indian merchants rely heavily on the WhatsApp Business app, a smartphone-based service designed for small enterprises. These businesses often register their accounts on a SIM-linked phone while managing customer interactions through WhatsApp’s web or desktop client on another device. Unlike larger corporations that leverage WhatsApp’s Business APIs for automated, CRM-linked communication, small businesses depend on the WhatsApp Business app and its companion web interface. Consequently, mandatory SIM binding and frequent forced logouts could severely disrupt essential workflows for order-taking, customer support, and engagement.
This potential disruption is particularly ironic given WhatsApp’s recent efforts to expand its multi-device and companion-device capabilities, which aim to allow users and businesses to remain logged in across various devices without relying on a single active smartphone.
Shifting Growth Dynamics in India
These new directives coincide with a significant shift in WhatsApp’s growth strategy in India. The market, its largest, is increasingly driven by retaining existing users rather than rapidly expanding its new user base. Sensor Tower data reveals that WhatsApp’s monthly active users (MAU) on mobile devices in India increased by 6% year-over-year in the fourth quarter to date, even as downloads plummeted by nearly 49%. Compared to late 2022, MAUs are up 24%, while downloads are down 14% over the same period.
“It could be fair to say that user (MAU) growth for WhatsApp in India across the past few years has been driven more by retention (successfully re-engaging existing or previous users) than acquiring new users,” said Abraham Yousef, senior insights analyst at Sensor Tower.
Appfigures data further illustrates this trend, showing that WhatsApp Business has consistently recorded more estimated first-time installs than WhatsApp Messenger in India since early 2024. This indicates that growth is increasingly fueled by merchant adoption rather than broad consumer expansion. Randy Nelson, head of insights at Appfigures, explained that this pattern reflects common usage in India, where merchants often maintain separate WhatsApp identities for personal and business communications, frequently utilizing dual-SIM phones. A single business might also generate multiple installs across staff and shop devices.
Sensor Tower data supports this, estimating that WhatsApp Business MAUs in India were still growing year-over-year in late 2025, surging over 130% compared to 2021. This significantly outpaces WhatsApp Messenger’s approximately 34% growth during the same period. While overall engagement remains higher on WhatsApp—with Indian users spending an average of 38 minutes daily in November compared to 27 minutes on WhatsApp Business—the gap is notably different in the U.S., where users spent about 23 minutes daily on WhatsApp and 27 minutes on WhatsApp Business.
Industry Concerns and Legal Challenges
The Broadband India Forum (BIF), an industry body whose members include Meta, issued a statement last week expressing concerns that the measures could lead to “material inconvenience and service disruption on ordinary users,” while also raising “serious questions of technical feasibility.”
Kazim Rizvi, founding director of New Delhi-based public policy think tank The Dialogue, highlighted that the directives hinge on a new and contentious classification of Telecommunication Identifier User Entities (TIUEs) under India’s telecom cybersecurity rules. This effectively places messaging apps within a telecom framework—a departure from their traditional regulation under the country’s IT Act—through executive directions rather than formal legislation.
“The directions derive their power not from statute but from delegated legislation,” Rizvi told TechCrunch. “Moreover, the lack of public consultations or technical working groups risks creating compliance friction without addressing the underlying fraud vectors.”
India’s telecom ministry did not respond to requests for comment. According to tech policy experts, companies like Meta currently have limited avenues to challenge these directions in court. Dhruv Garg, a tech policy advisor and partner at the Indian Governance and Policy Project, explained that a successful challenge would typically require demonstrating that the directives either exceed the scope of the underlying law or violate constitutional protections—a high bar that may be difficult to meet in this specific case. Meta declined to comment on the article.
