Estimate the number of WhatsApp chats happening in India.

Hello people, 7th article it’s of the #30daysofproduct series, in this I would be solving a problem on Estimation, let’s get started on this one.

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A few clarifying questions I would like to ask are -

1. By chats do you mean 1–1 chats only or does it include group chats as well? (Interviewer — Consider both)
2. Do you want me to consider sharing images, videos, gifs as a part of the chat? (Interviewer — No, consider text only)
3. We want to analyze from a single user perspective right and not the total number of chats on both ends? (Interviewer —Yes)
4. Can we consider chats that happened in the past 24 hours? (Interviewer — Fine)

Now after this, I would build an equation and according to that, will find the final answer, so for this equation could be -

Total no of chats = Number of personal chats + Number of Group chats.

Number of personal chats = Total no of WhatsApp users * Avg no of chats
Number of Group chats = Total no of WhatsApp users * Avg no of chats

Starting with the total population of India which is equal to 1.3Bn or 1300Mn. Now out of this, considering only 60% of the population has access to the internet, from which 50% owns the mobile and out of which only 90% of people use WhatsApp. So, the number of people who uses WhatsApp are -

(1300)*(0.6)*(0.5)*(0.9) =~ 350M users.

Now segmenting things here on the basis of 1–1 personal and group chats -

Personal (1–1) chats -

• Considering an average person has 5 contacts, who s/he daily interact and chats with and on an average, they send 2 messages daily, and this sums up to be a total of 10 messages received. Also another assumption I’m taking here’s the person also replies to that message two times only, so the total message that is exchanged becomes = 20.
• Multiplying this by the total number of users gives us (350)*(20) = 7,000Mn.
• Now out of these 7,000 Mn messages if we calculate from one user perspective(as this chat is happening among 2 users) then that comes out to be (7000)/(2) = 3,500Mn messages

Group chats -

• Here considering that an average user is a part of 5 groups, and each group at least receives 2 messages in a day, that total sums out to be 10 messages received. But for groups many a time, the user doesn’t need to reply, as few of them might be just for sharing jokes, images, etc. Now, if the user replies with only 1 message in a group, then the total comes out to be 10 + 5= 15 messages exchanged.
• Multiplying this by the total number of users gives us (350)*(15) = 5,250Mn.
• Now, on average a group consists of 100 members, so dividing the number by 100, to actually find out the message sent by the single user we got (5250)/(100) =~ 50Mn.

Finally putting these numbers into equation we got -

3500 + 50 = 3550Mn = 3.5Bn

Thus the total number of WhatsApp chats that are happening in India in a single day is = 3.5B

Although I’ve taken a lot of assumptions, but the overall answer seems to be fair as from WhatsApp statistics, the total number of active people using WhatsApp in India is 390M, which seems fine as each person is sending an avg of 10 messages in a day.

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