Calvin Kizana Officially Appointed as Head of WhatsApp Indonesia

Application messenger WhatsApp, announced the presence of Calvin Kizana as Head of WhatsApp in Indonesia. Calvin started his new role today in the Jakarta office. This appointment reinforces Indonesia's importance to WhatsApp.

Calvin is a veteran in the Indonesian startup industry. Before joining WhatsApp which was acquired by Facebook (now Meta) in 2014, Calvin had built two startups namely Playday, a platform live streamingand PicMix, a social media platform. Calvin before was COO of GoPlay, a live streaming platform company under GoTo.

In his new position, Calvin will focus on strengthening WhatsApp's local partnerships in Indonesia and expanding the use of the WhatsApp Business Platform to help people discover, message and interact with businesses within the app.

“WhatsApp connects people here — friends, family and communities, and we want to make it easy for businesses to connect. This is a great opportunity for me to work on a product that touches the lives of many people across Indonesia, and I can't wait to get started," said Head of WhatsApp Indonesia Calvin Kizana.

Over the past few years, WhatsApp claims to have made significant investments in Indonesia, including in the areas of health, digital literacy, small business training and community building. The digital literacy partnership with Kominfo has reached more than 2,4 million people in 34 provinces.

“As a successful entrepreneur, Calvin knows what it takes to build meaningful partnerships that deliver real value to society. We are very pleased that Calvin is joining us,” said WhatsApp Vice President of Global Affairs & Strategic Markets Victoria Grand.

The massive number of WhatsApp users in Indonesia

According to the released report Business of Apps, Indonesia is the third largest country in the world for the number of WhatsApp users in the world, after India and Brazil. It is estimated that in 2021 there will be 112 million WhatsApp users in Indonesia, or almost half of the population.

In total, as of 2021, the WhatsApp application has been downloaded by 5 billion people and there are more than two billion active users. This app is an app messenger most popular in over 100 countries. Apart from sending messages, the WhatsApp Voice and Video Call features are also available.

Business messaging is a key area of ​​investment for WhatsApp, with 7 in 10 Indonesians saying they prefer to message a business over the phone or email.

WhatsApp was founded in 2009 by Brian Acton and Jan Koum. The large number of users of this platform caught the attention of Mark Zuckerberg  acquire it a total of $19 billion in cash and stock.