Amid the comic book craze, TBS Planet is working to bring Indian superheroes into the spotlight. “When I started TBS Planet in July 2016 with comic book ‘Ved,’ it was a hobby,” said founder Rajeev Tamhankar. “Soon, we got contracts from Balaji Motion Pictures and Ajay Devgn Films to create comics for their movies ‘A Flying Jatt’ and ‘Shivaay,’ respectively. That’s when I quit my job and started this venture full-time”. Jabalpur-based TBS Planet which develops comics in six languages - Hindi, Telugu, Kannada, Bangla, Marathi, and English - is on WhatsApp Business app. “Since almost everyone uses WhatsApp, it helped us scale distribution quickly. No one needed to download a new app to read our comics,” said Mr Tamhankar. Since they started using the WhatsApp Business app, the company has seen high growth rates, up to 40 per cent month over month. TBS Planet has approximately 14,000 subscribers - some from as far away as Dubai and the US.

Many Indian entrepreneurs, said Cathcart who launched “Gateway to a Billion Opportunities”—a collection of impactful user stories from across India”, have built something from scratch and are seeing it thrive and expand with support from WhatsApp. When WhatsApp Pay becomes a reality soon in India, these small and micro-businesses will thrive more as peer-to-peer (P2P) payments will be done within WhatsApp, keeping transactions simple and secure.