New Delhi: Zoho had introduced the Arattai app back in 2021, following changes to the privacy policy of WhatsApp, that is seeing a spike in adoption after being promoted by the Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan. The name means ‘chitchat’ in Tamil. The Made in India Arattai Messenger climbed to the Number 1 spot in the Social Networking section on the App Store. The app is free, available on iOS and Android, with a Windows client as well. There are Channels for one-to-many messages, group chats that users can be invited to with QR codes, and conference call features as well. The ‘Swadeshi’ messaging app is seeing a surge in traffic.
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
In a post on X, cofounder and Chief Scientist of Zoho, Sridhar Vembu said, “We have faced a 100x increase in Arattai traffic in 3 days (new sign-ups went vertical from 3K/day to 350K/day). We are adding infrastructure on an emergency basis for another potential 100x peak surge. That is how exponentials work. As we add a lot more infrastructure, we are also fine tuning and updating the code to fix issues as they arise. We have all-hands-on-deck working flat out. As a matter of fact, we had planned on a big release by November, with a lot of the features you expect, a huge capacity addition and a marketing push. And then it suddenly went vertical! We have a lot more planned for Arattai, please give us some time. Thank you for your patience and support! Jai Hind.”
Viral Surge and Tech Endorsements
Arattai has emerged as a compelling alternative because of its seamless performance on budget devices. Sridhar Vembu, the Cofounder and Chief Scientist at Zoho has indicated that the app has been tested in bandwidths as low as 8kbps. State Minister for Commerce and Industry also indicated that his team had moved to the app, inviting other Indians to join as well. Entrepreneur Prakash Dadlani has been aggressively promoting the app on X, and asking for feature additions such as translations, transcriptions and suppression of ‘Good Morning’ messages. End-to-end encryption is coming soon to Arattai.