4.7 Estimate whatsapp messages

Estimate the number of Whatsapp messages sent in a day?

This question is related to guess estimation, and it can also be asked in different form like, "How many Whatsapp messages are sent in Delhi every day?" ? Let's take a look at how you can approach this problem.

Step 1 - Ask clarifying questions and narrow down the scope of the question

• Observe the question (carefully!) and when I say this, I mean it.
• It’s important to understand the question first. The question talks about estimating the number of WhatsApp messages sent in a day
• The interviewer has narrowed the dimension of the question for you by asking for a day. Nice!!
• But you need to simplify this much further (bruhh!)
  • Should you estimate it for particular geographies like India or Bangalore?
  • Should you estimate 1:1 messages, or include group messages, or Whatsapp business messages?

Step 2 - Break it down

• To send Whatsapp messages; you need to have a smartphone and after that, you need to have Whatsapp installed?

  • So first, you need to find how many smartphones exist in Delhi?
  • And then, how many smartphones have Whatsapp installed in them?

A. Finding smartphones in Delhi

B. Finding the number of Whatsapp installed on smartphones

Let's assume that 80% of all smartphones have Whatsapp installed for peer-to-peer messaging.

So, the number of smartphones with Whatsapp installed in Delhi = 80% of 7.5 M = 6 M

Step 3 - Break it down further**

The objective of a guess-estimate question is to understand whether you can break the question into smaller parts and then visualize the complete picture.

Since we have estimated the total Whatsapp user in Delhi to be 6M, you can further segment the user on the basis of their usage type - heavy users, casual users, and infrequent users.

And you can take a number for the average number of messages sent per user group.