New Delhi: India’s homegrown tech giant, Zoho Corporation, has recently been in the news due to the immense interest in the Arattai app, a homegrown alternative to WhatsApp. It all started when Union Ministers Ashwini Vaishnaw and Dharmendra Pradhan tweeted about the app when they met a delegation from the company led by founder Sridhar Vembu.
Arattai instant messaging app developed by @Zoho is free, easy-to-use, secure, safe and ‘Made in India’.
Guided by Hon’ble PM Shri @narendramodi ji’s call to adopt Swadeshi, I appeal to everyone to switch to India-made apps for staying connected with friends and family.… pic.twitter.com/Tptgbzgivg
— Dharmendra Pradhan (@dpradhanbjp) September 24, 2025
Post the meeting, interest in the app skyrocketed, with almost a 100x increase in downloads from the Apple App Store and Google Play Store. Arattai, meaning ‘casual chat’ in Tamil, was quietly launched in 2021, and had remained extremely low profile until that changed on September 29.
Since then, the app has seen a 100x surge in downloads, mirroring the ‘Make in India’ hype created around it online. But despite that, Meta-owned WhatsApp need not worry, as its status as India’s most favoured messaging app remains intact.
Why WhatsApp’s dominance is intact
Since its launch in 2009, WhatsApp has dominated the instant messaging market- primarily due to its first-mover advantage. The then little known startup had the foresight to predict the rise of Android as an OS for mobile, and designed its messaging app to align with the platform and its incremental updates.
Sixteen years, and a takeover by Facebook later, the messaging app is still going strong, just like Gmail has become anonymous with email, despite better opportunities in the market.
There are many other competitors to WhatsApp- Telegram, Discord, WeChat- but most don’t have the global appeal and dominance that WhatsApp does. In fact, almost 69% of all internet users use WhatsApp, except in a few countries like China and the US, where the messaging app isn’t that popular.
Why creating a ‘better’ version of WhatsApp will not work
Though WhatsApp does have its limitations- and apps like Arattai aim to address it better- they just cannot wean people away from WhatsApp. It may not be as addictive as Instagram or Snapchat, but it does have a widespread use that no other rival has been able to match. No wonder why this humble startup was sold to Meta (then Facebook) for almost $19 billion in 2014, allowing Facebook to integrate it into its social media suite.
A moment of hype
For now, Sridhar Vembu and his Zoho corporation are basking in the glory of the unprecedented hype surrounding the app. Many such apps came and went in the Indian ecosystem- Twitter clone Koo, TikTok clone Moj and others came and went- and got their share of the hype. Even Facebook launched Threads as an alternative to Twitter, but that too had its fair share of hype that died down fairly quickly.
Arattai aims to offer a better user experience, with support for all devices. But as past experiences show, it is impossible to break WhatsApp’s monopoly, with almost 500 million Indians using it monthly to stay in touch with friends, family and colleagues. For all practical purposes, this endorsement seems to be a well implemented publicity stunt by the company and it may boost Zoho Corporations reach in the future.
