Meta’s Business Coach on WhatsApp has been helping Indian SMBs skill up

Facebook, now known as Meta, had launched the Meta Business Coach on WhatsApp four months ago to help small and medium businesses (SMBs) across India learn how to grow their businesses online with the help of WhatsApp, Instagram, and Facebook. In four months, as the company mentioned in an announcement, the chatbot has been accessed by almost 150,000 business owners.

Based on the feedback received, Meta has decided to expand the reach of the Meta Business Coach chatbot in India over the next few months. The chatbot is available currently in English and Hindi, and it is going to be launched in other languages soon.

The Meta Business Coach is built on the WhatsApp Business Platform and is a “free-to-use, low data cost educational tool that users can interact with in a simple, conversational and convenient way”.

SMBs interacting with the chatbot get access to “automated, self-paced lessons that skill them on how to establish a presence in today’s ever-evolving digital economy”. “By simply sending ‘Learn’ on https://wa.me/911171279804/ SMB owners can access resources that will help them learn how to reach and engage with customers on Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp,” Meta explained.

The Meta Business Coach offers step-by-step courses and tutorials along with infographics, videos, and audio clips. “The learning material is recommended based on the user’s needs and queries, with an option to navigate the curriculum via the menu. The content was created to assist business owners with multiple queries – from how to create attention-grabbing business pages and accounts on Facebook and Instagram, to how to use Messenger and WhatsApp to communicate effectively with clients,” the company added.

“Across metros and smaller towns, India lives and connects on WhatsApp. When we thought about expanding our existing business skilling efforts, we couldn’t think of a more powerful solution than one on WhatsApp. As more small businesses rapidly move to online in India, we understand how critical timely and easily accessible business skills become for them to unlock growth. We hope the Meta Business Coach will be their partner along this journey, providing training that they need through their mobile phones,” said Archana Vohra, Director, Small and Medium Business, India at Meta.

India is one of the first countries to get the Meta Business Coach and was also one of the first countries where it was tested.

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