WhatsApp launches Meta Business Agent for AI powered commerce

MUMBAI: Your next customer service executive might not need a desk, just a prompt. WhatsApp has unveiled Meta Business Agent, an AI-powered assistant designed to help businesses automate customer conversations, manage routine operations and engage with users around the clock, signalling Meta’s next big push into conversational commerce in India.

The announcement was made at the third edition of WhatsApp’s Business Summit in Mumbai, where Meta showcased the new offering as a way for businesses to combine automation with personalised customer engagement at scale.

Meta Business Agent is built to handle a range of customer-facing tasks, including answering business-specific questions, recommending products from catalogues, booking appointments, qualifying leads and assisting with sales conversations. Businesses can also decide when an interaction should be transferred to a human executive.

Beyond customer support, the AI assistant is designed to help companies manage operations by generating insights from customer conversations and summarising missed interactions, allowing teams to monitor performance more efficiently.

Meta India managing director and country head Arun Srinivas said India has become one of the world’s fastest-growing markets for conversational business, with messaging increasingly replacing traditional communication channels between brands and consumers.

He added that as artificial intelligence becomes more deeply embedded in business operations, Meta Business Agent represents the next phase of that transformation by helping businesses deliver faster and more personalised customer experiences.

Alongside the AI assistant, Meta also introduced the Meta Business Agent Platform, targeting large enterprises that require infrastructure to build, customise and deploy AI-powered business agents at scale.

The platform enables organisations to integrate AI agents with existing enterprise tools such as Shopify, Zendesk and Shopee, while using the WhatsApp Business Platform as the primary customer engagement channel. According to Meta, the platform offers enterprise-grade scalability, measurement capabilities and administrative controls. 

Several businesses have already begun testing the technology.

Swiggy is using Meta Business Agent to simplify onboarding for delivery partners through WhatsApp, aiming to create a quicker and more intuitive registration process while reducing operational complexity. Beauty retailer Madhulika Enterprises reported a 25 to 30 per cent increase in conversions after deploying the AI assistant, with the technology now handling 50 to 60 per cent of repetitive customer queries related to bridal bookings, beauty products and training programmes. Travel company Kaizen Adventours said the AI agent has improved response times by instantly answering customer queries related to Ladakh tours, itineraries and bike rentals while managing seasonal spikes in demand.

Meta also announced new business discovery features within WhatsApp. Users will soon be able to search for businesses directly by name and share business contacts with friends and family, making it easier to discover and connect with brands without leaving the app.

The launch reflects Meta’s broader strategy of transforming WhatsApp from a messaging platform into a full-fledged business ecosystem where customer service, shopping, AI-powered assistance and commerce increasingly happen within a single conversation. As India’s digital economy embraces conversational commerce, Meta is betting that the future of customer engagement will begin with a message rather than a website.