According to research organizations, India's business messaging market is expected to reach $1 billion in revenue by 2025, up from $810 million in 2024, owing to advanced channels such as WhatsApp Business and RCS (rich communication services) from Google and Apple.
Experts also believe that price battles would continue in the Indian market among various channels, which have effectively become cheaper than SMSes in certain categories of communications.
According to Mordor Intelligence, the India CPaaS (communication-platform-as-a-service) market is expected to reach $1.01 billion in 2025 and $3.06 billion by 2030. According to prior Gartner forecasts, the market would grow to $3.2 billion by 2028, up from $1.3 billion in 2023.
Three significant breakthroughs will fuel growth this year: the availability of Apple RCS in India, GenAI-powered chat and voice bots for customer engagements, and WhatsApp voice communications for companies.
"The CPaaS landscape is poised for transformative growth in 2025, driven by advancements in AI, evolving customer expectations, and the expansion of conversational technologies," said Harsha Solanki, Infobip's vice-president and general manager for Asia.
Interest in GenAI among Indian businesses is growing, with 30% wanting to invest in GenAI for personalized customer experiences and 4% already deploying these solutions, according to the speaker.
Advanced Channels
According to Gartner, OTT channels WhatsApp and RCS would achieve a combined market value of $1.6 billion and account for 50% of India's commercial messaging industry by 2028.
This is a significant shift from a few years ago, when organizations spent 85% of their CPaaS resources on core services such as SMS and 15% on next-generation communications products.
According to a joint analysis by Omdia and Infobip, RCS will produce $544 million in revenue by 2029, based on 254 million transactions from India. This would represent 25% of RCS revenues in Asia and Oceania.
Notably, RCS, a rich iteration of SMS, is a standard managed by telecom providers. According to analysts, this is a win-win situation for both Google/Apple and telecom operators who use a revenue-sharing model.
The global market follows a similar trajectory.
According to Juniper Research, Apple's support will propel rich media traffic to new heights around the world. By 2028, RCS business messages provided by CPaaS platforms are estimated to reach 86 billion worldwide, up from 2.5 billion in 2024.
Juniper expects the worldwide CPaaS market to expand from $28 billion in 2024 to $58 billion in 2028.
The Voice Mode
WhatsApp will also introduce voice calling services for companies in 2025, allowing customers to contact their banks, airlines, and other service providers to fix issues. Despite a few issues in pilots, analysts believe OTT voice calling could be the next major revolution in the telephony sector.
"Businesses will look to adopt omni-channel voice modes, particularly with AI agents, which require less regulatory oversight than telecom calling," said Apurv Agrawal, CEO and cofounder of Squadstack, a SaaS supplier for tele-calling companies.
"It would be extremely convenient if client queries could be answered within the same chat and call window, specifically with an AI assistant. We are about to undergo big transformations," he stated.
To encourage usage of AI-powered chats and make the channel more competitive, WhatsApp announced two rounds of pricing reduction in 2024, including making certain service communications free. Beginning April 2025, WhatsApp will additionally provide free utility messages (account updates, transaction notifications) in response to consumers inside the 24-hour customer care window.
