WhatsApp completes a decade of operations: How it signed up 1.5 bn people

Co-founder Jan Koum's eastern European background, however, was the key to building WhatsApp, as he grew up in a communist country known for its secret policing activities

As WhatsApp completes 10 years of operations, the Facebook-owned messaging service continues to be one of the most powerful platforms globally as well as in India. 
 

This comes despite the messaging platform being embroiled in a slew of controversies in most of the countries it operates in.

WhatsApp, which has been able to hold its weight against Twitter, Google and Microsoft’s Skype, has about 1.5 billion users in 180 countries who find it easy to send messages across different countries and mobile devices. 

“It’s been 10 years since we started WhatsApp! Over the past decade, we’ve heard from people across