WhatsApp is emerging as an unlikely customer-acquisition engine for India’s online brands, challenging its long-held role as a customer retention and support channel.About 83% of orders generated through WhatsApp during the October-December festive quarter came from first-time buyers, according to a report by GoKwik. Brands using WhatsApp marketing tools on the company’s network recorded median gross merchandise value growth that was 2.25 times higher than those that did not.“The brands seeing outsized growth on WhatsApp aren’t sending more messages. They are letting AI decide which message to send, to whom, and when,” said Chirag Taneja, co-founder and chief executive officer of GoKwik. “That shift from broadcast to AI-driven contextual commerce is what’s creating a structural performance gap.”The report, based on an analysis of 26 billion messages sent by more than 1,800 direct-to-consumer brands over four quarters, found that automated customer journeys such as abandoned-cart reminders, order updates and loyalty prompts delivered average click-through rates of 11.1%, compared with 2.6% for broadcast campaigns.The findings highlight a growing divide between brands using targeted automation and those relying on mass messaging. In electronics, top-performing brands achieved WhatsApp conversion rates of nearly 1.5%, compared with a network average of 0.4%, according to the report.The shift comes as India’s D2C brands look for cheaper ways to acquire customers amid rising marketing costs and intensifying competition. Fashion brands, the largest contributors to WhatsApp-driven revenue on the network, recorded conversion rates nearly 2.5 times the category average among top performers.The report also found growing adoption of AI-powered customer service. Bot-led query resolution rates rose to 73.4% during the year from 67.1%, with automated systems increasingly handling routine requests such as order tracking, returns and frequently asked questions.The findings suggest WhatsApp is evolving from a communication tool into a commerce platform, though the benefits remain concentrated among brands deploying AI-driven personalization and audience segmentation.