Update: at a press conference yesterday, where WeChat, incidentally, repeatedly declined to disclose its active user base in India, or provide details on the usage of services on its platform, the did tell us that the official accounts created in partnership with WeChat get API access, that a normal account can not. AskMe also gets featured as an official account on WeChat. But really, this is of no use if WeChat doesn't have usage. In response to a query from MediaNama, Jaspreet Bindra, CEO of Getit Informedia said that there is no push based component to the service, but it is possible for AskMe to push updates to its followers. Bindra also mentioned that no premium charges are levied on SME's for promoting their deals of WeChat. "We are in the business of enabling SME's to be digitally discovered. We do that through our own products, askme, yellowpages.in, freeads. Whether it's through a partnership with Yahoo, Nokia, Facebook, whatever. When a message gets discovered, it gets into an integrated billing management system, and passed on to SME's. We have different commercial relationships with different SME's. Sometimes certain leads are more valuable than others." He didn't comment on what sort of an addressable active user base WeChat provides to Getit, or on why Getit chose WeChat over other platforms to begin with. WeChat also allows commerce, but this service hasn't been launched in India yet. The success of that depends on how many users AskMe can get on WeChat to follow…
