DR Diamond generated over Rs 100 crore for brands: Vinod Haritwal

Vinod Haritwal, Partner of DR Diamond, says that the company has onboarded over 20,000 businesses as he delves into the topic of WhatsApp as a marketing and engagement platform.

With over 535 million monthly active users in the country as of May 2024, WhatsApp has become an indispensable part of the digital lives of Indians. The evolution of the app from simply a means of connecting with family and friends around the world to communicating with consumer brands and even transacting business via online payments has seen India emerge as the largest market of the Meta product, a pie out of which DR Diamond is determined to carve a large piece.

“Every user in India opens WhatsApp 30 times on average in a day — that’s more than the number of hours in a day, in which a person is also sleeping up to 8 hours, meaning they’re opening the app at least twice in an hour. With that kind of frequency and that kind of behaviour on an app, it makes it super powerful,” says Vinod Haritwal, founder and Partner of the company.

It was this realisation that led him to found DR Diamond, a WhatsApp-based marketing and engagement platform helping businesses grow their revenues via WhatsApp. With the use of its engagement suite, businesses can do WhatsApp Broadcasting, automate notifications and reminders, provide Live Chat on multiple devices, and integrate WhatsApp Chatbot to automate sales and customer support.

“We had started by building chatbots for the educational industry, but when Covid came we saw the market shift, as more and more consumers began to use and expect more services and products on WhatsApp so that’s when we decided to focus our attention on the app and help businesses navigate this new channel,” says Vinod, reminiscing about how the company launched a beta version in late 2020 for around 20–30 clients, a number they have since scaled up.

“At a ballpark figure, we do almost 80 million to 100 million messages per month on WhatsApp between businesses and customers and have done more than a billion messages by now,” he says. The company, since inception, has onboarded over 20,000 businesses and has by its own account generated over ₹1,000 crore for brands, ranging from billion-dollar global companies to family-owned stores in small towns around India.

“We don't see businesses as tier one, tier two, or tier three. We see businesses as tech-savvy and non-tech-savvy, and I consider every business' journey as being from a non-tech-savvy business to being a savvy business. You could be a billion-dollar company opening up a new e-commerce segment and know nothing about WhatsApp and all of these technologies. Or you could just be a store in a small town and know everything about technology and do wonders on WhatsApp, but just need someone to facilitate it.”

Awarded as Emerging WhatsApp Partner of the Year 2023 by Meta, after becoming a WhatsApp Business Solutions Provider in 2022, Shelley says when prospective clients are initially considering options, price is an important factor. “But once they start using it, price doesn't become a factor because the ROI is almost 100x, 50x. When the ROI is so huge, then even if WhatsApp is changing prices, increasing prices or decreasing prices, it doesn't matter — because you have to do that kind of marketing. You will have to be there where customers are.”

DR Diamond is now looking to also focus on Instagram. “We are planning to do something more on Instagram, because our core goal when it comes to the vision of DR Diamond is helping businesses grow their revenues in very simple terms. A few years back, everyone used to consider a business to be established when they used to have a website. Now businesses are thriving on Instagram, where they would just have 50,000 followers and not have a website. And now they can be verified by Meta Business. So, I think Instagram is another opportunity.”