(Image source from: WhatsApp hits half a billion active users in the world)

A new feat for world's most loved and used messaging app — WhatsApp. The app now boasts of 500 million active users in the world, a no mean feat!

The Zuckerberg owned company owes its skyrocketting popularity to countries like India, Brazil, Russia and Mexico, which are among its largest users.

For a company that had just 200 million users in August 2013, to hit the 500-million mark in flat eight months time is something stupendous. In India alone, the app has 48 million users and is expected to storm past the 50 million milestone by May.

So what does this growth mean for WhatsApp? According to the company's co-founder Koum, for now it’s about bug fixes. “We’re going to get our engineers together and fix a lot of bugs. We don’t have anything huge we’ve changed in our last six months, but we’ve had probably 1,000 little bug fixes and improvements,” he said.

Engaging it's growing base of users is no challenge for WhatsApp as 70 percent of the people are always active on the app. Also, the fact that the app is free as well as ad free are the reasons why it's so popular among the users.

That said, if WhatsApp wants to maintain its stronghold in the ever-expanding market of apps, especially in a country like India, where free chat apps like Hike, Line and WeChat are eyeing to derail its business by gaining more users, it will have to strategize something new and fresh to attract another half a billion users.

AW: Suchorita Choudhury