Zoho’s Arattai, a “Made in India” instant messaging app, has ignited the social networking category to an extent where it is leading the social apps in India on several major app stores surpassing rivals like WhatsApp. Besides having a meteoric user growth, the app is also gaining the policymakers’ interest thus signaling a strong case for privacy-centric and locally developed solutions in India’s digital landscape.
The Rise of Arattai
Initially, as an experimental project by Zoho in 2021, the Arattai signal was barely visible from the horizon. As fears of surveillance, data sovereignty, and technological independence mounted worldwide, the ‘made-in-India spy-free’ concept of the messenger app started to gain ground rapidly with more links being added each day. Amongst the most significant events leading to massive growth spurt were the speech of India’s Union Education Minister greeting a local tech ecosystem, the endorsement from a technology influencer, Vivek Wadhwa, and Impressive user experience narrative by Arattai.
The daily sign-ups skyrocketed from 3,000 to 350,000 or 100 times increase in just a few days. According to Zoho, this sudden popularity has been influenced by government endorsement, buzz on social media and insecurity of privacy on foreign platforms raising people’s suspicion in India.
Privacy and Security: An Unresolved Challenge
Despite the success of Arattai, many security-conscious users have reported a significant technical issue with the app, i.e., voice and video calls can be end-to-end encrypted (E2EE) while text conversations do not have a similar security provision. Unlike WhatsApp, Signal, and iMessage where an industry-leading standard E2EE for chats has been adopted, users are constantly reassured that no third party, even the platform itself, has access to their messages.
The lack of E2EE for chat in Arattai leaves the door wide open for conversations to be intercepted by hackers, internet service providers, or staff assisting the server if the server has been compromised by criminals. This is a big enough issue to hold back potential users, including those in businesses who might be sharing sensitive data, and one which rivals won’t hesitate to use to Arattai’s detriment.
Regulatory and Growth Implications
In the case where conversations are unencrypted, the application called Arattai is exposed to criticism, loss of users, and even regulatory action in areas where privacy laws are strict. The best way to ensure trust in today’s messaging ecosystem is if Zoho makes a definite commitment to this feature being part of their near future development pipeline. Sridhar Vembu, Zoho Co-Founder, while assuring data privacy in general, declared ongoing infrastructure investment, new features, and a tentative realization of major upgrades very soon.
The Scaling Challenge
Arattai’s architecture has barely survived this sudden popularity. Users have experienced slower than expected OTP delivery, sluggish contact synchronization, and sign-up delays at times—issues that the company is quick to recognize as resulting from server overload. The company is fast upgrading the server’s space and promises to have effected the “emergency basis” scaling maneuver soon, thus, performance will be back to normal within a few days.
Why Users Should Pay Attention
For the average Indian who wants a homegrown solution free from the influence of the global giants, this app is the best choice in the market. It is a go-getter’s journey toward digital privacy and behind-the-scenes wonders among other domestic tech companies.
That is not to say, however, that Arattai can really dethrone WhatsApp unless the company makes a promise and then delivers it with regard to the e2ee front. Privacy-centric users may therefore remain cautiously optimistic and diligently monitoring every release of Zoho as it races to keep its promise until that time comes.
