Arattai, India’s homegrown messaging platform, has been consistently grabbing attention in recent weeks. The app is emerging as a tough challenger to global players such as WhatsApp and Weibo. Currently ranked at the top of app stores in the social networking segment, Arattai has secured a strong foothold. Backed by its focus on user privacy and the credibility of its Chennai-based creators, the platform is being promoted as a reliable substitute in a market where more than 500 million users are deeply dependent on Meta-owned WhatsApp.
Arattai has surged past prominent global rivals:
Arattai, the indigenous messaging platform from India, has overtaken leading international competitors to secure the number one position on app store charts. This achievement not only underscores its rising popularity but also signals the mounting challenges that accompany such rapid success.
Arattai comes packed with all the standard tools users expect—private and group messaging, audio clips, file sharing, voice and video calls, status updates, and broadcast channels. What sets it apart is the availability of an Android TV version, a feature WhatsApp has yet to roll out for its audience.
Vembu emphasized that Zoho operates independently of cloud giants like AWS, Azure, or GCP for its service infrastructure. “Every service we offer runs on our own servers and custom-built software platforms, leveraging open-source technologies such as Linux and PostgreSQL. In particular, Arattai is completely hosted on our proprietary systems, not on AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud,” he clarified.
Arattai is facing challenges typical of overnight sensations:
Arattai’s rapid ascent has brought with it the typical hurdles faced by apps that gain sudden popularity. Zoho has admitted to experiencing issues such as delayed OTP delivery, slower contact synchronization, and occasional lag during the sign-up process, all stemming from increased server demand. The company assures users that it is “actively expanding server capacity” and aims to resolve these problems within the coming days.
Although Arattai markets itself as a privacy-focused, secure messaging platform, it currently lacks default end-to-end encryption (E2EE) for text conversations—a protection that competitors like WhatsApp, Signal, and certain features of Telegram already implement across messages, calls, and video chats.