How the WhatsApp Outage Hurt Small Businesses in India

On late Monday evening, 23-year-old Sana Imitiyaz Hussani was, as usual, wearing a salwar suit (traditional Indian attire) with a white apron bearing a pink label that said “Sweet Temptations by Sana Imitiyaz.” After putting the final touches on cake orders, she pulled out her mobile phone to send a WhatsApp message to the delivery service that would take the treats to her customers. But she couldn’t reach the service.

Sana started her home-based bakery business out of Srinagar, the largest city in the state of Jammu and Kashmir, in early 2017, and used Instagram to get the word out. Now, she has more than 11,800 followers and has hired three employees to keep up with orders. But when she couldn’t send the message to the delivery service on Monday, she was confused.

“I thought in all probability my internet is not functioning. I connected to a Wi-Fi, it still did not work. I waited for few extra minutes and tried to follow up over again but a similar problem persisted. I tried to switch to my Instagram account but could hardly open it,” she told me. (We spoke in Urdu; I have translated her quotes and others in this piece into English.)