‘India crucial to how we see future of AI on Meta platforms’

Arun Srinivas, managing director and head for Meta in India, is bullish on the company’s offering to businesses, especially small and medium businesses (SMBs), and their artificial intelligence (AI)-powered offerings, which he says have started giving returns on every rupee they spend.

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In an interview with Shivani Shinde in Mumbai, his first since he took over the mandate, he talks about the growing significance of SMBs in WhatsApp messaging, a rethink of the WhatsApp Pay strategy, and innovation from India. Edited excerpts:

It’s been six months into the new role. How has the ride been so far?

■ It’s very exciting and energising as well. It is also a continuation of the journey. India has been at the forefront for us. First, because it is a country on a digitisation journey, and the sheer scale of the population and the diversity plays out very well for our ecosystem. We have a good size of users on WhatsApp and Instagram, MetaI, etc. Second is the creator ecosystem we have. India is home to a significant chunk of our global creator ecosystem. A large part of the content that is put up on the platform originates in India. We are seeing that play out very well. When both these exist, businesses will choose this as a vehicle to talk about. It is really building on the momentum that is already there. India is very pivotal and important to Meta. How we take this ecosystem across all these constituents — users, creators, and business — is what I am focused on.

For the past few years, business messaging and the creator economy have been the big focus. Will you continue to focus on that?