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Is WhatsApp finally meeting its match?
Financial Express Kochi
|October 12, 2025
Homegrown messaging app Arattai is making all the right noises in a country with the highest number of WhatsApp users in the world
IS WHATSAPP ABOUT to see a worthy contender in India? A messaging app that was originally soft-launched in January 2021,Zoho’s Arattai is getting a massive push as a made-in-India messaging app, witnessing an over 100x adoption surge in India over the past few months. So much so that the founder has made public statements committing security features and upgrades to app users in the near future.
‘Arattai’ is the Tamil word for a casual chat. The app was launched by Sridhar Vembu, founder of Zoho Soft-wares, who has said on record that the sudden surge of downloads has surprisingly come even before a major haul of updates that are scheduled for November this year. In the first week of October, Vembu said that in just three days, Arattai’s daily downloads shot up from 3,000 to 35,000.
This story is from the October 12, 2025 edition of Financial Express Kochi.
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