# WhatsApp Marketing in India: Rules, Timing and What Works > WhatsApp marketing in India, step by step: consent under the DPDP Act and TRAI rules, the right language for each customer, business-hour timing, festival campaigns and message examples with +91 numbers. Published 11 October 2026 · About Nitro · 9 min read Source: https://leadsadd.com/blog/whatsapp-marketing-india WhatsApp marketing in India is the practice of sending short, personal messages to customers who gave you their mobile number and agreed to hear from you, in the language they use with you, during business hours. It works because customers already read WhatsApp many times a day, and it fails when a business sends one message to numbers it bought or copied. This guide covers the rules in plain words, how to collect consent, which language to write in, when to send, what to send around the festival season, and how bulk WhatsApp marketing in India stays safe for your numbers. ## The short answer 1. Collect mobile numbers with clear consent and note when and how each person agreed. 2. Store numbers as +91 followed by the ten-digit mobile, and keep landlines out of the list. 3. Write in the customer's language and keep each message to one offer and one question. 4. Send during business hours in Indian Standard Time, and avoid late nights and the main festival day itself. 5. Pace the sending like a person, answer every reply, and honour STOP on every number. ## What are the rules for WhatsApp marketing in India? Two sets of rules shape WhatsApp marketing in India. The Digital Personal Data Protection Act 2023 (the DPDP Act) treats a customer's mobile number as personal data: you need a clear purpose for collecting it, consent the person gave freely, and a way for them to withdraw it. TRAI, the telecom regulator, has rules on commercial messages and a Do Not Disturb (DND) registry that let people choose which promotional calls and SMS they receive. Those rules were written for SMS and calls, but they set the standard customers expect from any channel: say who you are, send only to people who agreed, and stop when asked. In practice this means four habits: - Ask before you add a number to a marketing list, and write down when and where the person agreed. - Put your business name in the first line of every marketing message. - End each campaign message with "Reply STOP to stop these messages", act on it the same day, and never send to that number again from any of your numbers. This is general information, not legal advice; check the current rules for the country you send to. Our guide to [WhatsApp opt-in and opt-out](/blog/whatsapp-opt-in-opt-out) has consent wording you can copy. ## How do you collect numbers with consent in India? Most Indian businesses already have the numbers they need; the gap is proof that the customer agreed to marketing. A numbered process: 1. **At the counter.** Add a line to the bill or registration form, "Send me offers and updates on WhatsApp", with a tick box, and keep the signed copy. 2. **On your website.** Put the same tick box under the enquiry form, unticked by default, with one sentence on what you will send and how often. 3. **Store it properly.** One row per person with name, +91 number, language, city, the date of consent and where it came from. Number format matters because WhatsApp matches on the full international number. An Indian mobile is ten digits; store it as +91 followed by those ten digits, with no leading zero and no spaces, for example +919876543210 (a made-up number). If you need new B2B contacts rather than existing customers, see our guide to [lead generation in India](/blog/lead-generation-india); a first message to a business should introduce you and ask whether they want to hear more, not sell. ## Which language should your WhatsApp messages use? India has many languages, and customers reply far more readily in the one they use every day. Write in the language the customer used with you: Hindi, English, or a regional language such as Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Bengali, Gujarati or Punjabi. In chat, many people mix languages or write Hindi in Latin letters ("Hinglish"), and a marketing message written the same way reads as friendly rather than careless. Record the language with the contact when you collect the number, so each group gets its own version, and have a native speaker read every translation. ## When should you send WhatsApp marketing messages in India? The whole country runs on Indian Standard Time, so there is no time-zone planning, but the right hour still depends on who you write to. Working people check WhatsApp on the commute, at lunch and after dinner; shop owners read between customers; parents check after the school run. | Audience | Best window (IST) | Avoid | |---|---|---| | Offices and professionals | 10 am to 12 noon, 3 pm to 5 pm, Monday to Friday | Monday before 10 am, Friday after 6 pm | | Shop and showroom customers | 11 am to 1 pm, 5 pm to 8 pm | Sunday morning, after 9 pm | | Business owners and traders | 11 am to 1 pm, Tuesday to Saturday | Monday morning, the shop's closing day | | Parents | 9 am to 11 am, 8 pm to 9 pm | School pick-up time, exam weeks | Festival seasons change the calendar. Diwali, Eid, Pongal, Onam, Durga Puja, Holi, Ganesh Chaturthi, Navratri, Christmas and the regional New Year days each bring a buying period that starts two to three weeks before the day itself. Send the offer at the start of that period, a reminder a few days before, and a greeting with no offer on the day. ## What should a WhatsApp marketing message in India say? A good message has four parts: the person's name, who you are, one offer or piece of news, and one question. Two examples to adapt. A festival offer from a shop: ``` Namaste {{first_name|ji}}, Sharma Sarees here. Our Diwali collection is in store from Saturday, and as a regular customer you get first choice until 20 October. Shall we keep a slot for you on Saturday or Sunday? Reply STOP to stop these messages. ``` A service reminder in Hinglish: ``` Hi {{first_name|there}}, Raj Electronics se. Aapka AC service due hai. Is hafte Mon-Sat 10 se 6 baje ke beech slot free hai. Kaunsa din theek rahega? STOP likhein to aage message nahi aayenge. ``` A worked example: say you run a furniture showroom in Hyderabad with 1,500 customers who bought in the last two years and ticked the WhatsApp box. For Diwali you send a photo of the new range with a short caption and a question about the delivery date they want, in Telugu to customers who wrote to you in Telugu and in English to the rest. With two numbers each sending up to 200 messages a day, the whole list goes out in four working days, well before the shopping weekend. Replies come back to one inbox, where a staff member books the showroom visits. For more wording, our [WhatsApp message templates](/blog/whatsapp-message-templates) post has 25 messages you can copy. ## How does bulk WhatsApp marketing in India stay safe? "Bulk" is the word people search for, but the safe way to send to a large list is a long series of personal messages, not one blast. WhatsApp can limit accounts that many people block or report, so message people who expect you. Beyond consent, four habits keep a number healthy: 1. Send with random gaps of a minute or so between messages, with short breaks, and a daily total each number can sustain. 2. Give a new number a slow first fortnight: a few messages a day to people who will reply, then a little more each day. 3. Vary the wording with two or three versions so the messages are not identical. 4. Use several numbers for a big list, keep each customer with the number they already know, and pause any number that starts failing. ## Where Nitro fits Nitro is WhatsApp campaign software for Windows that sends personal messages from your own WhatsApp numbers, linked the way WhatsApp Web links a browser. You import customers from Excel or CSV, with a default country so that ten-digit Indian numbers get +91 added and landlines are skipped. [Personal fields](/nitro/features#fields) such as {{first_name|ji}} and spin text with up to 50 variants let you send a message that reads as one person writing to another, in any language. The [schedule](/nitro/features#schedule) sets sending hours by your clock, and the built-in pace adds random waits of 35 to 90 seconds between messages, a break every 25 and a daily cap per number. Replies land in one inbox, STOP puts the contact on the opt-out list automatically, and reports show sent, delivered, read and replied counts by number and campaign. One honest limit: Nitro lowers the risk of a number being restricted through pacing and warm-up, but it cannot stop every restriction, so the list you send to matters more than any setting. ## Frequently asked questions ### Is WhatsApp marketing in India legal? Yes, when you send to people who agreed to receive messages from you, say who you are and give a way to stop. The DPDP Act 2023 covers how you collect and use mobile numbers, and TRAI's rules on commercial messages set the expectation that customers choose what they receive. This is general information, not legal advice; check the current rules for the country you send to. ### How should Indian mobile numbers be formatted for WhatsApp? Store each number as +91 followed by the ten-digit mobile, with no leading zero and no spaces, so WhatsApp can match it. Landlines with an area code cannot receive WhatsApp messages and should be removed from the list before you send. ### What is the best time to send WhatsApp marketing messages in India? Business hours in Indian Standard Time, usually between 10 am and 1 pm or 4 pm and 7 pm, with the exact window depending on the audience. Avoid late nights, Sunday mornings and the main festival day itself. ### How many WhatsApp messages can I send a day in India? WhatsApp does not publish a fixed daily number for ordinary accounts, and what matters is how people react to your messages. A settled number sending a couple of hundred personal messages a day to people who expect them, with gaps between them, is a sensible working level; a new number should start with about 20 a day and grow slowly. ## Next step Today, go through your customer list, remove every landline, store the rest as +91 numbers, and mark the ones with recorded consent and a language. Then run a first small campaign to your most recent customers and read the replies before you scale up. To send personal messages from your own numbers at a safe pace, [see Nitro](/nitro).