When a petitioner approached the Supreme Court for the restoration of their blocked WhatsApp account, the apex court reportedly refused to entertain the petition and also pitched Arattai as an alternate.
The petitioner was being represented by Senior Advocate Mahalaxmi Pavani who said that the person had been using WhatsApp for the past 10-12 years and used the app to communicate with the clients as he worked at a poly-diagnostic center, LiveLaw reported.
“What is your fundamental right to have access to WhatsApp?” the bench of Justices Vikram Nath and Sandeep Mehta reportedly said and added “There are other communication applications, you can use them. Recently, there’s this indigenous app called Arattai…use that. Make In India!”, remarked Justice Mehta.
Arattai is an instant messaging app developed by Indian company Zoho Corporation, which has over 10 years of experience in building communication and collaboration software for enterprises.
During the hearing, the bench questioned Pavani about the maintainability of an Article 32 petition for the reliefs sought and suggested that the petitioner may rather file a civil suit.
Pavani reportedly told the bench that the petitioner’s WhatsApp had been blocked without any specific reason.
When Justice Nath asked why the petitioner’s WhatsApp account has been blocked, Pavani replied that they have not been given any reason. The petitioner was then asked to approach the High Court to which Pavani said that the issue is a pan-India one and therefore the petitioner is also seeking guidelines governing the power of social media intermediaries’ blocking/suspension of people’s accounts, “ensuring due process, transparency and proportionality”.
Meanwhile, Arattai has topped 7.5 million overall downloads as on Friday, marking one of the fastest adoption feat for a local app in recent times.
Push for ‘Make-in-India’ in tech
The viral streak comes amid clarion calls by ministers, founders and CEOs to embrace the Made-in-India messaging app, the rapid daily sign-ups that followed, and widespread sharing and invitations circulating on social media platforms, including ironically, various WhatsApp groups, PTI reported.
According to the company, Arattai has touched 7.5 million overall downloads (7.5 million accounts registered overall) as on October 3, 2025, including Google’s Play Store and Apple’s App Store.
Zoho founder Sridhar Vembu in an X post on Sunday detailed the homegrown engineering frameworks that run Arattai.
“This is what I told our Arattai team yesterday: all of you have worked hard for over 5 years without expecting that the product would ever take off. Allow neither praise nor criticism nor fame to distract you, resolutely stay the course. That is our mindset,” Vembu, now chief scientist at Zoho, wrote.