"Every product has a story which is much smaller than the capacity of the product but more powerful than any product idea," says Saraansh Tandon.

In 2014, Saaransh's startup FeetPort (legally known as Competent Groove), which was handling verification/KYC of hard copies of documents for banks, started to build a product to help automate his father's business. They started out by building a SaaS platform for automation but later molded it into a product which could serve any organization with a field force.

Based in Chandigarh, their long-term goal is to help organizations work more by doing less through technology. "With our platform, field executives can now spend more time meeting customers. Hence, they maximize their family time as well," says Saraansh.

"WhatsApp Business is like email for India, but more personal"

FeetPort was already using WhatsApp but started using the WhatsApp Business app within a week of its launch. The app helped them automate their support department and improve customer communication. They use WhatsApp to circulate training material when they deploy the FeetPort software for an organization. They also use it for customer support and to contact leads.

"WhatsApp Business is like email for India, but more personal. It helps simplify the on-boarding process and minimize the broken experience of SMS," says Saaransh. The app also helps them send auto-responses outside of business hours and notify people about their availability.

Over the past year, FeetPort has grown by 40 percent in terms of revenue and 240 percent in terms of number of users on their platform. They have started experimenting with WhatsApp Status to promote content and increase brand awareness. "We post a story a day which talks about how our platform helps a certain use case."

They have observed 20-22 percent faster closure of support tickets when they contact customers via WhatsApp. Also, 12-14 percent of leads who don’t answer the phone reply when they leave a message on WhatsApp.