There’s also the issue of noise. WhatsApp users in India are well known for sending a constant stream of daily “Good Morning!” messages, jokes and videos, regardless of their relevance. Mr. Naik said he has had to remove several people from his group for flooding the chat with emoticons and greetings.

Users have also complained to him that all the chats, photos and videos consume too much of their phone’s memory. “A few have deleted the group because their memory was getting full, and they were unable to use their phone for anything else,” he said, while others have upgraded to a new phone just to stay in the group.

Mr. Bandawane said he doesn’t like the 256-person limit on the group sizes, given the huge number of farmers across India interested in joining.

Kaushik Ramasway, 40, a caterer in New Delhi, said he preferred promoting his business on Instagram rather than WhatsApp. “A message popping up on WhatsApp saying, ‘Buy my aloo chokha’ seems a bit intrusive,” he said. “Instagram is what culinary artists and restaurants and caterers have used from the very beginning to promote their food.”

But Ms. Tanya, the Goya Journal co-founder, remains optimistic about WhatsApp’s impact on India’s food culture.

She recalled interviewing Ummi Abdulla, an expert on the Muslim cuisine of Malabar, in Kerala, for an article. Ms. Abdulla, 84, is known for cooking traditional food, but for Ms. Tanya, “she made this dish that was so innovative and out of the box: It was homemade bread in the shape of a cone, stuffed with minced mutton.”

What had inspired such creativity? Ms. Abdulla was frank: She had seen the dish on WhatsApp.