Can an Indian-made messaging app compete with the behemoth that is WhatsApp?
Over the past couple of weeks, Arattai, developed by Indian tech company Zoho, has become a viral sensation in the country. The company says it saw seven million downloads in “seven days last week”, without specifying the dates. According to market intelligence firm Sensor Tower, Arattai’s downloads were less than 10,000 in August.
Arattai, which means banter in the Tamil language, had a soft launch in 2021, but not many had heard of it. The sudden surge in its popularity is being linked to the federal government’s push for self-reliance as India deals with the impact of steep US trade tariffs on its goods.
It’s a message that Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his ministers have repeated over the past few weeks – make in India and spend in India.
Federal minister Dharmendra Pradhan said as much when he posted about Arattai on X a fortnight ago urging people to use “India-made apps [to stay] connected”. Since then, several other ministers and business leaders have also posted about Arattai.
The company says the push from the government “definitely contributed to the sudden surge in Arattai downloads”.
“In just three days, we saw daily sign-ups increase from 3,000 to 350,000. In terms of our user base’s active users, we saw a 100X jump, and that number is continuing to rise,” Zoho CEO Mani Vembu told the BBC, adding that this also shows that users are “enthusiastic about a homegrown product that can meet all their unique needs and requirements”.
The company has not provided details about their active users, but experts say that they are still a far cry from the 500 million monthly active users that Meta’s WhatsApp has in India.
India is WhatsApp’s biggest market and the app is almost a way of life in the country, with people using it for everything from sending bulk good morning wishes to running their businesses.
Arattai has features similar to WhatsApp, and allows users to send messages and make voice and video calls. Both apps also offer a set of business tools and, just like WhatsApp, Arattai claims that it is built to operate smoothly on low-end phones and even on slow internet speeds.
Many users have praised Arattai on social media, with some saying that they liked its interface and design while others felt that it matched WhatsApp in usability. Many also took pride in it being an Indian-made app and encouraged others to download it.
Arattai isn’t the first Indian app to dream of replacing huge international rivals. In the past, Indian-made apps such as Koo and Moj had been touted as replacements for X and TikTok (after the Indian government banned the Chinese app in 2020), respectively, but they never really took off after their initial success. Even ShareChat, once touted as the big rival to WhatsApp, has tempered its ambitions.
Delhi-based technology writer and analyst Prasanto K Roy says that it will be difficult for Arattai to break through WhatsApp’s extensive user base, especially as the Meta-owned platform hosts a large number of businesses and government services on the platform.
Arattai’s success will depend on its capacity to not just amass new users but also retain them, he says, which cannot be driven by nationalist sentiment alone.
“The product has to be good, but even then, it’s unlikely that it will be able to replace an app that has billions of existing users in the world,” Mr Roy adds.
Some experts have also raised concerns about data privacy on Arattai. While the app offers end-to-end encryption (E2EE) of video and voice calls, it does not currently extend this feature to messages.
“The government wants to establish traceability of messages citing security concerns and this can be done easily without end-to-end encryption,” says Shashidhar KJ, managing editor at MediaNama, a web portal that reports on tech policy in India. But this puts people’s privacy at risk, he adds.
Arattai says it is actively working on rolling out end-to-end encryption for text messages.
“We had initially planned to launch this app after E2EE, which would have happened in a couple of months,” Mani Vembu said. “However, the timelines have been pushed up, and we are trying to bring some critical features and infrastructure support as quickly as possible.”
WhatsApp does offer end-to-end encryption of messages and calls but, according to its policy, it can share meta data – such as message or call logs – with governments under legally valid circumstances.
India’s internet laws require social media platforms to share user data with the federal government under certain circumstances, but obtaining this data from international companies is difficult and time-consuming.
Global giants such as Meta and X also have the legal and financial backing to push against government requests or rules they think are unfair.
In 2021, WhatsApp sued India over the government’s new digital rules to regulate content on social media and streaming platforms, saying they violated WhatsApp’s privacy protections. X, too, has mounted legal challenges against the Indian government’s powers to block or take down content.
So, experts ask would Indian-made Arattai be able to stand up to government demands that may put users’ privacy rights at risk?
Rahul Matthan, who specialises in tech law, says that until there is more clarity on Arattai’s privacy architecture and Zoho’s stand on sharing user-generated content with the government, many people may not feel comfortable using it.
Mr Roy says that it’s possible for Zoho to feel beholden to the government, especially since federal ministers have been publicising the app. Also, he adds, it may not be easy for an Indian start-up to strongly resist when asked to comply with the country’s laws and law enforcement requests.
When asked about what Arattai would do if it gets such requests, Mani Vembu says the company “wants its users to retain full control over their data while complying with the country’s information technology rules and regulations”.
“Once full end-to-end encryption is rolled out, even we won’t have access to the content of user conversations. We will be transparent with our users about any legal obligations,” he said.
Experience suggests that odds are stacked against Indian apps, especially when habit-forming giants like WhatsApp and Facebook dominate. Whether Arattai can break through – or will fade like so many before – remains to be seen.
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