Amid calls to embrace 'Swadeshi', Made-in-India messaging app Arattai hits 7.5 million downloads

New Delhi: Zoho-backed homegrown messaging platform 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.

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.

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.

In the post, Vembu said he had advised his team to resolutely stay course, and not allow praise, criticism nor fame to distract.

"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.

He said that while Arattai is a simple product on the surface, it holds a lot of depth inside.

"First is what we call our messaging/AV framework. This has been the real time workhorse of Zoho for a while and this is what offers you those crisp calls and meetings that connect quickly. It has been perfected for 15 years," he said.

Further, the framework allows for distribution of the workload among many servers and databases, and provides fault tolerance, performance monitoring, security, he explained.

"We have teams actively working on these frameworks and they provide strong support to the Arattai team. Our staying power comes from the depth of all the R&D we do," he wrote.

Vembu said he recently moved full time to R&D and promised that more innovations are in the offing.

Tarun Pathak, Research Director at Counterpoint Research, believes that the surge reflects a broader long-term trend rather than a short-term spike, especially as India steps into an AI-driven era with limited indigenous alternatives.

"We look at it as more of a long term trend rather than a short term because if you look at from the indigenous capabilities point of view, we have very few alternatives in India that too when we are entering into an AI era," Pathak told PTI.

He said India's digital mission demands self-reliance in critical areas such as cyber security, artificial intelligence, and sovereign cloud infrastructure, all of which are essential pillars for the nation's technological and economic strides.

"...security is going to be very, very important going forward. So I think the digital infrastructure if you have to build...no better way to build than on a local stack...So, this is what government aims to do with this," he said.

The use of the indigenous platform by government officials can lead to its wider adoption, Pathak said, emphasising that scale will be crucial.

Faisal Kawoosa, Chief Analyst and Founder, Techarc, said it is encouraging to see leaders actively promoting and driving the 'Swadeshi' software movement in India, as it helps raise awareness, build reliability, and foster trust in indigenous applications.

"However, businesses especially MSMEs are extremely price sensitive and will decide after evaluating the upfront as well as operational costs. I think along with this a good incentive could be giving say tax benefits or some reimbursement for spending on local software wherever possible," he said.

Analysts also point out that the response of deep-pocketed global players, now remains to be seen.

"We have to see how the global players will react as they have deep pockets to make their solutions aggressively priced even if that means losing some money in the short run to acquire market. Also, these global players by now have developed large SME teams to drive business, which increases their reach and distribution," Kawoosa said.

Over the last few days, the homegrown messaging app (Arattai means 'casual chat' in Tamil) has gained ground as secure, user-friendly alternative to WhatsApp, after Union ministers Ashwini Vaishnaw, Piyush Goyal, and Dharmendra Pradhan publicly endorsed it, bolstering its visibility and credibility.

The surge in popularity aligns with India's ongoing push to promote 'Swadeshi' and bolster the country's self-reliance in technology.

On Saturday, Indian billionaire and industrialist Anand Mahindra took to X to share that he had downloaded Arattai "with pride" and wished it great success.