By Ettech Last Updated
Copyright indiatimes
Chennai-based Zoho’s instant messaging app Arattai has found success very late in its life cycle, zooming to the top of Apple’s App Store rankings in the social media category in India. The company had launched the messaging app, which rivals WhatsApp, in 2021, but with a few high-profile government endorsements, the app has found new fame and traction in India. Arattai, which literally means “casual chat” in Tamil, surged to number one on the App Store after a public backing from union minister Dharmendra Pradhan and IT minister Ashwini Vaishnaw. Pradhan urged citizens to adopt the “free, easy-to-use, secure, and safe” platform as part of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Swadeshi initiative to promote Indian-made digital products.Vaishnaw demonstrated this commitment during a Union Cabinet briefing by using Zoho Show instead of Microsoft PowerPoint for his presentation, while announcing his personal switch to Zoho’s office suite. “I am moving to Zoho, our own Swadeshi platform for documents, spreadsheets & presentations,” Vaishnaw posted on X.Zoho founder Sridhar Vembu called the ministerial endorsement “a huge morale boost for our engineers who have worked hard for over two decades to build our product suite”.”It is another example of our patient engineering approach at work. We have taken the time because we have to make it work in low end phones, low bandwidth networks (we test down to 8 kilobits/sec), offer outstanding privacy and security, and be very easy to use, all at the same time!” Vembu posted on X.About ArattaiArattai has similar messaging capabilities to WhatsApp, with text messaging, voice and video calls, media sharing, group chats supporting up to 1,000 members, stories, and broadcast channels. The app was built for low-end phones and poor connectivity areas to address accessibility concerns in rural parts of the country.The app was launched in 2021, when WhatsApp faced a major exodus of users. The Meta-owned company was updating its privacy policy and terms of service to share significantly more user information with the parent. While the company clarified that the new privacy update is limited to business interactions and doesn’t include private conversations, that didn’t stop users from jumping ship to rivals Signal and Telegram. Zoho wanted a piece of that pie.While the app added hundreds of new users in just a few days, there is a significant security gap. It provides end-to-end encryption for voice and video calls but text messages are not yet encrypted to the same standard. This is opposite to WhatsApp, its chief and massive rival in the Indian market which offers comprehensive end-to-end encryption for all communications. The company has acknowledged this limitation, stating on social media that “end-to-end encryption for chats is under development and coming soon”.CompetitionDespite its early success, Arattai faces a major competitor in WhatsApp, which has over 500 million users in India alone. Over the past few days, the app is already under strain due to unexpected surge in users. “Dear Arattai users, some of you may experience OTP delays/failures, slower contact sync, or call issues due to unexpected load on our servers. We’re expanding our infrastructure and should be back to normal in a couple of days. Thanks for your patience & support!” it wrote in a post on X.
