The much-hyped roll out of end-to-end encryption has failed to revive user interest in Zoho’s instant messaging app Arattai, which continues to see muted growth in new sign-ups and Monthly Active Users (MAUs).
Data exclusively sourced from global market intelligence firm Sensor Tower shows that Arattai’s monthly active user base halved from 14 million in October to 7.4 million in November, and has remained in the same range so far in December.
MAUs refers to the number of unique users who engage with an app at least once within a given month. MAUs are crucial for instant messaging platforms as they reflect user engagement and retention. Higher MAUs indicate a more vibrant and sticky user base, which is essential for driving network effects and long-term growth.
Privacy feature that couldn’t reverse the trend
The stagnation in MAUs comes despite the roll out of its long-awaited end-to-end encryption feature on November 18. The update was meant to address Arattai’s biggest perceived weakness, the lack of privacy, which is a core strength of global rival WhatsApp.
Announcing the upgrade, Zoho co-founder and Chief Scientist Sridhar Vembu said “many more cool features” are in the pipeline once “this big transition” is completed. As part of the rollout, Arattai introduced compulsory encryption for one-to-one chats, with plans to extend it to group conversations.
Arattai has been downloaded nearly 17 million times in India since launch, with more than 75% of those downloads coming in October 2025 alone, as per Sensor Tower estimates.
In September, Arattai’s daily sign-ups had surged from 3,000 to 350,000 within just three days, fuelled by government endorsements, social media buzz, and its pitch as a secure, privacy-first alternative to WhatsApp.
According to Sensor Tower, Arattai’s weekly downloads surged more than 10x during the week beginning September 29, but “this rapid growth was difficult to maintain as weekly downloads declined an average of 34% week-over-week, per week, over the next 8 weeks,” it added.
Network effect trap and WhatsApp’s dominance
The user momentum faded due to the absence of an end-to-end encryption feature at the time. The ‘network effect trap’ also hindered Arattai’s adoption. Since a messaging app gains value only when a critical mass of users adopt it, and most users are already on WhatsApp, switching requires a collective shift rather than just individual choices.
“The network effects of WhatsApp and Telegram are global. Many people have friends and contacts across the world and find value in that connectivity,” says Nikhil Pahwa, Founder of MediaNama. India has seen multiple challengers like Plustxt, Imsy, Gupshup Messenger, Hike, and even global players like Line and WeChat but none have dented WhatsApp’s dominance, which now exceeds 500 million users in the country. “Arattai will always be a second option, like many of these were,” Pahwa told FE earlier.
According to reports, Arattai’s downloads jumped from 2.6 million in September to 13.8 million in October before plunging to just 200,000 in November. The app also fell out of the top 100 on both Google Play and Apple’s App Store. By November, it ranked 105th on Google Play and 123rd on the App Store, a sharp decline from its brief stint at the top in mid-October. In combined app-and-game rankings, Arattai slipped further to 150th on Google Play and 128th on the App Store.
Arattai’s ranking in the social networking category on India’s iOS platform dropped to 24th as of Wednesday from 19th at the end of November. On Android, its ranking fell to 17th from 12th during the same period, as per Sensor Tower insights.