Coronavirus update: India’s MyGov chatbot on WhatsApp gets over 1.7cr users in 10 days
The Indian government launched a dedicated WhatsApp chatbot called MyGov Corona Helpdesk with an aim to provide timely updates and help citizens clear their queries on COVID-19. Within a span of two weeks, the coronavirus helpdesk chatbot has reportedly been used by over 1.7 crore users in India.
The MyGov Corona Helpdesk was launched by the government on March 20. Within the first week of its launch, the chatbot registered over crore users and processed over 1.4 crore conversations. Haptik, the developers of the MyGov Corona Helpdesk chatbot, told Gadgets360 that by March 30, it had a user base of over 1.7 crore along with 2.5 crore conversations.
The MyGov Corona Helpdesk can be used by all WhatsApp users for free. Users just need to save the number — 9013151515 — in their contacts list and send a message to get a response.
The report mentions that on March 25, the chatbot had over 17 lakh daily active users — on the day when Prime Minister Narendra Modi mentioned its availability. However, on the following day, the number of active users grew exponentially to 35 lakh daily users. The sudden spike in users led to a slow response rate. However, the company says it managed to restore the services within four hours.
Haptik says that it gets nearly 20 lakh users a day, and can scale up to 1-1.5 crore users every day. The chatbot currently supports English and Hindi languages and is working with the MyGov team to figure out if and when they want to add more languages.
Apart from the MyGov WhatsApp Chatbot, the government has also set up two helpline numbers — +91-11-23978046 and 1075 (toll-free) — and an email id (ncov2019@gov.in) to resolve the queries of Indian citizens. A list of helpline numbers for all states and union territories in India has also been released
There is also a dedicated Telegram channel for coronavirus-related updates which, at the time of writing this, had over 8.7 lakh registered users.
The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting has also set up an official Twitter handle called IndiaFightsCorona (@COVIDNewsByMIB) to share verified and timely updates.