Key Points :
Downloads went up 100× in two days with day-wise enrollments jumping from 3,000 to 350,000.
Arattai is the No. 1 app in India’s top app stores in the Social Networking category.
Zoho is scaling infrastructure to address OTP delays, contact sync failures, and calls being disrupted.
Key Background :
Arattai was launched by Zoho in January 2021 in a stealth limited beta with friends and family testing. While privacy issues with foreign messaging apps provided the growth opportunity initially, the platform never took off for more than two years.
The tide shifted when the quest for digital sovereignty grew stronger in India. The government representatives started advocating for employing local platforms for public use, as per the nation’s “Aatmanirbhar Bharat” vision. This advocacy coupled with increasing consumer desire for local, secure communication channels witnessed new users hit a record figure.
Zoho was soon struggling to keep pace with demand. The firm experienced 100x download spikes in a matter of days, debilitating its servers and demonstrating the necessity for fast scaling. Slogans of slow OTP delays, slow contact synchronization, and call cuts quickly filtered through, piling pressure on Zoho to drive further on infrastructure spending and system stability.
Despite these growing pains, Arattai’s feature set end-to-end encryption, multimedia sharing, group chats, and cross-platform access gives it a competitive foundation. Analysts believe that sustaining user trust and maintaining performance will be critical for converting this initial spike into long-term growth.
The meteoric growth of Arattai is an indication of something larger than the achievement of a single app. It’s an indication of a larger trend in India’s tech industry, where homegrown players will overthrow global incumbents. If Zoho continues at the same pace and delivers an error-free user experience, Arattai can redefine the messaging universe in the country and set an indigenous digital platform benchmark.
About the Author
Abhishek Roy
Abhishek Roy is a Managing Editor at Business Minds Media India.