Arattai is Getting Better. Sadly, No One is Using It.

Zoho’s Arattai is getting its biggest upgrade yet. End-to-end encryption is finally rolling out, and co-founder Sridhar Vembu is asking users to update the app. The green shield icon is ready. Chats will move to a new encrypted thread, while older conversations will be archived. 

In two weeks, chat backups will arrive. Group encryption will follow. Everything is lined up. But there’s one problem: there’s almost no one left to use it.

A few weeks ago, Arattai looked like it was on the rise. The app briefly shot to the top of India’s social charts. It even overtook WhatsApp, Signal and Telegram. Government ministers praised it. Nationalist sentiment fuelled its momentum. Download surged and many opened it. And then, most never returned.

Countless posts on X and Reddit described users uninstalling the app owing to a lack of activity. From 1.36 crore downloads in October, Arattai fell to just two lakh downloads in November.

Today, it doesn’t appear even in the top 200 apps on the Play Store and has dropped to 11th in the Communications category. WhatsApp has absorbed nearly every meaningful feature. Multi-device. Encryption. Scheduling calls. Chat locks. Backups. The gaps closed, and Arattai ran out of incentives. A chat app without people ultimately becomes an empty room.

What’s Wrong?

This is not the first time India has tried to build its own messaging platform. Hike tried and fell. Koo tried and stalled. Network effects crush new entrants long before they find footing. 

WhatsApp’s dominance is not just a story about features. It is a story about habit, and about identity. 

To understand why, you have to begin where everyone begins: with phone numbers. Reverie Language Technologies co-founder Vivekanand Pani explained it best to AIM. 

He explained that Yahoo! Messenger, MSN Messenger, AOL and ICQ were all wildly popular once. They each required sign ups. They each created separate identities. None could talk to the other. They hoped email IDs would help, but most phone users did not have email IDs. They had mobile numbers. SMS was expensive. IP messaging was cheap. The only missing link was identity. WhatsApp connected those dots.

WhatsApp did not ask users to change their behaviour. It sat on top of the phone address book. It used the phone number as the handle. It removed friction and offered free media sharing. It offered no need for extra sign ups. It simply rode the rush of the mobile internet adoption. Everything else came after.

That is the wall Arattai is up against. Encryption may be important, but most people do not act on it until something goes wrong. Blackberry proved that. It was secure. It was reliable. Only business users cared.

Pani believes Gen Z might still save Arattai. “They understand the need for encryption and privacy a lot better. They do not have too many elders to be in their groups. They are quick to adopt and form habits that would last. Their groups are still forming. Arattai may actually end up discovering a lot of specific usage needs from their behavior and differentiate,” he said.

He added that his first startup, Reverie Language Technologies, also developed a phone number-based messaging app in 2007. “That was our first product. But, as bootstrapped founders, we could not fund the servers in those days for a free messaging app for long and had to take it down,” he said.

What Happens Then?

Arattai’s rise earlier this year showed that people wanted to try it. The issue was not curiosity, but depth.

Inside the app, there was a steady list of features that Zoho had built for years: built-in meetings like Zoom, a ‘Pocket’ to save messages, a ‘Mentions’ tab to track conversations and a ‘Till I reach’ option for sharing travel. Moreover, there were no ads, no external clouds. All data stored in India. Zoho built everything in-house. 

CEO Mani Vembu told AIM earlier that Arattai runs on Zoho’s oldest infrastructure, dating back to 2005. It powers Zoho Cliq internally. It has been scaled for years. The team knows how to run it. The spurt of new downloads was not stressful. They only had to add servers. The architecture remained intact.

Zoho prefers the long game. They do not push features in panic. They care about repeat usage, whether people open the app again tomorrow. This approach works in SaaS. Messaging demands something else. It demands universality. Messaging is not a place where slow and steady always wins.

The irony is striking. For a country that talks endlessly about digital sovereignty, Arattai should have been a stronger contender. 

The timeline of Arattai’s rise looked promising. A privacy backlash hit WhatsApp and Telegram. Users looked for local alternatives. Arattai spiked. Then the wave receded. People opened the app and saw an empty contact list. There is no network effect for handshakes. If no one replies, a chat app collapses.

Commentary online shows the gap. Users welcomed the new encryption update. They asked for a lock icon; the team added a shield. They asked for theme changes; the team promised consistency. They asked for video call encryption; the team confirmed it. These are signs of momentum. 

But the numbers tell a different story. People are simply not there.

Arattai’s team is still pushing updates. Still rolling out new features. Still improving the UI. Still engaging on social media. Still promising that more is coming. They are not giving up. As Sridhar said in an ANI interview, “Nothing goes straight to the moon. Real companies ride through rises and dips, and only those with a long-term mindset survive.”

The future of Arattai now hinges on one question: can an app that people have already abandoned make a comeback?

The turtle keeps walking. The rabbit keeps sprinting. The race is no longer the point. The point now is whether Arattai can stay long enough for a new generation to care.

The post Arattai is Getting Better. Sadly, No One is Using It. appeared first on Analytics India Magazine.

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