As marketers grapple with evolving consumer behaviour and the demand for hyper-personalised engagement, Pooja Sharma, VP – Presales, Solutioning & Customer Experience at ValueFirst, made a compelling case for WhatsApp as the new epicentre of customer journeys.
Speaking at the Pitch CMO Summit 2025, Sharma said, “From booking a cab to planning a vacation or ordering food, ValueFirst powers billions of such interactions across SMS, WhatsApp, RCS, voice, and more. But if there’s one channel CMOs cannot ignore today, it’s WhatsApp.”
Sharma underscored the messaging app’s unmatched scale and daily relevance, “With over 600 million conversations between people and businesses each day, and 68% of users citing WhatsApp as a high-priority channel, the platform offers far more than just communication - it’s a full-funnel commerce tool.”
Backed by case studies from clients like INDmoney, Indigo, and LIC, Sharma demonstrated how brands can achieve measurable ROI using WhatsApp Business API. She cited Indigo’s WhatsApp-native bookings, real-time meal orders, and 2x ROAS through Click-to-WhatsApp campaigns as proof points.
For LIC, ValueFirst enables over 2.5 lakh chat sessions a month, with a significant share focused on policy updates and premium reminders. “We’ve helped brands move from notification-based messaging to outcome-driven journeys,” Sharma noted.
Central to Sharma’s presentation was the idea that Click-to-WhatsApp ads, integrated with Meta’s Conversions API, can collapse the traditional funnel. From discovery on Instagram or Facebook to conversation and checkout, all within one interface, Sharma described this as the “zero drop-off experience” that CMOs must aspire to.
She explained, “Consumers drop off when they’re forced to jump across apps or pages. WhatsApp now supports in-chat payments, rich media, and AI-powered bots, everything a brand needs to close the loop fast.”
Sharma also highlighted ValueFirst’s recent campaign for the government’s Har Ghar Tiranga initiative, which reached 58 million users via WhatsApp. “It was not just reach—it was engagement. We embedded the national flag into user-submitted selfies using AI and sent it back. 82% read rate, 42% engagement. That's the power of scale and sentiment combined.”
Acknowledging the increasingly complex job of CMOs, Sharma concluded by urging marketers to move beyond fragmented touchpoints. “The future belongs to brands that meet consumers where they are, at the right time, on the right app, with the right message. WhatsApp can be your storefront, your billboard, your sales rep—and your CRM.”
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