Amid fizzling popularity, Arattai can still make a comeback

It's time for the company to bring in more innovative value-added features, and user privacy options to build trust among new potential customers.

Earlier this year, when Donald Trump announced tariffs on India over its oil trade with Russia, some technology companies suspended services to Indian clients. Prominent among them was Microsoft suspending cloud and productivity services to Nayara Energy.

Though the Redmond-based company restored services later, people began raising concerns about local firms being overly reliant on foreign companies and the need to develop indigenous platforms.

Amid those calls, Union Minister of Education, Dharmendra Pradhan, in September started promoting Zoho's swadeshi Arattai Messenger app for communication.

Arattai (meaning chat in Tamil) is an all-in-one messenger app. Users can send texts and voice notes, share photos, documents and even make audio/video calls or post stories similar to Meta's WhatsApp platform.

Thanks to support from union ministers, Arattai, which was originally launched in 2021, became a new favourite among the citizens. Within weeks, it reached the top of the charts on both the Apple App Store and Google Play. It gained a 100 per cent surge, registering millions of downloads. On Android, it has more than one crore installations.

However, when the news broke that Arattai has no end-to-end encryption feature, it came under scrutiny from user privacy activists. Just a few weeks ago, the Sridhar Vembu-owned company introduced the new security feature, but it has not helped the company to get new subscribers.

Sridhar Vembu, co-founder of Zoho Corporation.

The initial euphoria around the Arattai has kind of faded away among smartphone users in India.

The user interface is simple and easy to use, on par with WhatsApp. It even has multi-device support, disappearing messages, group video conference features and more, but the hype has fizzled out.

It is now placed at 25th position in the top social messenger apps list on Apple App Store, while on Google Play Store, it is placed in 8th position.

Arattai or for that matter any Indian app we have seen so far isn't offering any substantial value add that would encourage users to use or switch to the platform. Its only an alternative to something which is very widely used and popular, there is no customer paint point and there are no complaints or challenges customers have. So what does Arattai bring to the table other than being an alternative? In digital world, there has to be a switching proposition, which Arattai does not have

Mohammad Faisal Ali Kawoosa, founder, Techarc, data analytics, market research and consulting services firm

It needs to take a leaf out of WhatsApp Messenger's playbook to promote more, launch ads on social media networks, print newspapers and TV, to bring awareness among potential subscribers about Arattai.

If not, Arattai may face the fate of Koo, which was once pitted as the strong contender to dethrone Twitter (now X platform) as the top micro-blogging site in India.

Koo, which was launched in 2020, used to have a 10-per-cent like ratio, almost seven to ten times the ratio on Twitter (now X), making the Indian social media platform more favourable for local creators.

At its peak, Koo had more than 2.1 million daily active users and around 10 million monthly active users. It had more than 9,000 celebrities, including union ministries' accounts.

Twitter rival Koo has 200 employees on its rolls, at present.

In July 2024, Koo shut its shop after it failed to secure more funds to run the platform. Besides that, a few other shortfalls were that the company failed to monetise its services effectively and lacked key differentiation features from rival platforms.

Unlike Koo, which faced a funding crunch, Arattai is better placed in this particular aspect, as Zoho is a big private corporation. The parent company has several profitable businesses, including Software-as-a-Service, CRM (Customer Relationship Management) software, SalesIQ, HR, Finance, a productivity suite of applications and more.

It's time for the company to bring in more innovative value-added features, user privacy options to build trust among new potential customers and bring more subscribers from rival platforms to its fold.

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