Whatsapp’s India unit reports Rs 62 lakh profits in first full year of operations

Whatsapp Application Services, the Indian unit of Facebook-owned Whatsapp, reported net profits at Rs 62 lakh for the financial year ended March 31, 2019. Total revenues for the year stood at Rs 6.8 crore. The company attributed its revenues to marketing and the sale of information technology enabled services.

The earnings reflect the first full financial year of operations for the Hyderabad-registered entity. The Indian arm of the US-based messenger platform was incorporated in October 2017, due to which the earnings on year-on-year basis are not comparable. In FY18 the company reported total cost of Rs 5 lakh as payment to the auditor. It did not report any revenues for the last financial year. 

The company had deferred tax liabilities of around Rs 9.5 lakh during the financial year and made tax payment worth Rs 32 lakhs. 

In FY19, Whatsapp Application Services saw a total expenditure of Rs 6 crore. During the year, Anne Hoge Milliken resigned as a director and was replaced by Ashish Chandra, the company’s associate India general counsel, as additional director.

WhatsApp, founded by former Yahoo employees Jan Koum and Brian Acton, was acquired by Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook in 2014, but continues to operate as an independent unit.

Around 10 lakh businesses in India currently use WhatsApp Business, which was launched recently in India to communicate and exchange information with their customers, according to media reports.