By Ettech Last Updated

Copyright indiatimes

Union commerce and industry minister Piyush Goyal announced on Monday that he has joined the indigenously developed instant messaging app, Arattai.Posting on X, he said, “Nothing beats the feeling of using a #Swadeshi product. So proud to be on @Arattai, a #MadeInIndia messaging platform that brings India closer.”Arattai is a social media app developed by Zoho, a Chennai-based tech company. Although the app was launched in 2021 to rival WhatsApp, it has recently gained momentum in India following public endorsements by senior government ministers.Also Read: Perplexity’s Aravind Srinivas lauds Zoho’s Arattai for rapid user spikeUnion education minister Dharmendra Pradhan and IT minister Ashwini Vaishnaw have both shown their support. Pradhan encouraged people to use the app as part of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Swadeshi movement, which promotes the use of Indian-made digital products.Vaishnaw demonstrated his support by using Zoho Show instead of Microsoft PowerPoint during a Union Cabinet briefing. He also announced his personal move to Zoho’s office suite, posting on X: “I am moving to Zoho, our own Swadeshi platform for documents, spreadsheets & presentations.”Zoho founder Sridhar Vembu called the backing from the ministers “a huge morale boost for our engineers who have worked hard for over two decades to build our product suite”.Following these endorsements, Arattai saw an unprecedented spike in activity. Vembu reported that traffic had surged 100 times in just three days. Daily new sign-ups soared from 3,000 to 350,000. In response, Zoho is rapidly expanding its infrastructure to prepare for another possible 100x increase in demand.”As we add a lot more infrastructure, we are also fine-tuning and updating the code to fix issues as they arise. We have all-hands-on-deck working flat out,” Vembu stated.Just last week, the app reached the number one spot in the social media category on Apple’s App Store in India.About ArattaiAccording to its website, Arattai means “casual talk” or “chit-chat” in Tamil. “True to its name, it can be used to ‘arattai’ with your friends and family,” the company says.The app offers features similar to WhatsApp, including text messaging, voice and video calls, media sharing, group chats for up to 1,000 people, stories, and broadcast channels. It’s also designed to work well on low-end smartphones and in areas with poor internet connectivity, making it more accessible to users in rural parts of India.However, despite a surge in popularity, the app still has a key security limitation. While it offers end-to-end encryption for voice and video calls, text messages do not have the same level of protection. In contrast, WhatsApp, Arattai’s main competitor, provides full end-to-end encryption for all types of communication.Zoho has acknowledged this shortfall and stated on social media that “end-to-end encryption for chats is under development and coming soon”.