Video calling on WhatsApp is a bigger deal than just a new feature

Video calling apps have existed for at least a decade. Skype offered free video calls way back in 2006, Apple launched FaceTime in 2010, Facebook Messenger got video calling last year and Google has been dabbling with the feature in multiple avatars for a while, and now has Duo.

Yet, WhatsApp's entry is a bigger deal, especially in emerging markets.

The biggest thing going for WhatsApp is its sheer user base -- over 1 billion monthly active users worldwide. To put the numbers into perspective, Skype has about 300 million monthly active users globally while WhatsApp has 160 million in India alone.

WhatsApp was built at a time when carriers used to charge for every message you sent. With WhatsApp, you could send unlimited messages for free (if you were in a Wi-Fi hotspot) or for a fraction of the cost of a regular text message. WhatsApp first democratized text and multimedia messaging, then voice calls and it is now poised to do the same with video calls.

Thanks to its roots in emerging markets (it came into the spotlight in the U.S. only when Facebook acquired it), WhatsApp was built to be ubiquitous and it has successfully managed to become the world's largest messaging and communications platform. It works well on the cheapest smartphones and the slowest networks. It was built for a mobile-only world and that is a big advantage.

The beauty of WhatsApp is that you do not need to have a social graph in order to use it, unlike Facebook Messenger or Google Hangouts. Your phone number and the contacts in your phone book are your social graph. You do not need to have an email account to sign up unlike Skype and Hangouts and you are not locked on one particular ecosystem like Apple's FaceTime.

In emerging markets like India, where people access the internet using cheap Android smartphones (the iPhone has less than 2 percent market share) and for most the PC-era never happened, which means a major chunk of users do not even have an email address, WhatsApp is going to be their first brush with video calling.

We have already seen the impact WhatsApp is having on India's farmers, now think about how video calling could augment it. Migrant workers would be able to chat with their families over video for the first time without having to set up email accounts or look for desktops.

Unlike most other messaging services, which are used by end users, WhatsApp has been embraced by government agencies. Many state governments and police departments in India are already using WhatsApp to let citizens reach out to them and video calling could possibly amplify it. Imagine being able to register a police complaint via a WhatsApp video call rather than having to go to a police station in person.

The truth about messaging apps and services is that people use the service where their friends and family are and not by the latest features. WhatsApp certainly has the numbers and now can compete with everyone else on features too.