Zoho’s Arattai app sees daily sign-ups soar 100x in three days
The spike has been driven by government endorsements, social media buzz.
ADVERTISEMENT
Zoho’s messaging app, Arattai, has experienced a dramatic surge in daily sign-ups, jumping from 3,000 to 350,000 in just three days.
The spike has been driven by government endorsements, social media buzz, and Arattai’s positioning as a secure, privacy-focused alternative to global messaging platforms such as WhatsApp.
“We have faced a 100x increase in Arattai traffic in three days, with new sign-ups shooting up from 3K/day to 350K/day. We are adding infrastructure on an emergency basis for another potential 100x peak surge. That’s how exponentials work,” Sridhar Vembu, founder and chief scientist of Zoho, said on X.
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.
— Sridhar Vembu (@svembu) September 28, 2025
As we add a lot more infrastructure, we are…
Vembu added that Zoho had planned a major Arattai release in November, including new features, significant capacity upgrades, and a marketing push—but the demand suddenly went vertical. “We have a lot more planned for Arattai, please give us some time,” he said.
Arattai was initially launched in January 2021 under a beta “friends-and-family trial” phase, coinciding with heightened scrutiny of WhatsApp’s privacy policy, which allowed data sharing with Facebook. Despite this, the homegrown app struggled to gain traction in the market for several years.
The app returned to prominence last week after Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan encouraged citizens to adopt the Made-in-India messaging app, praising it as free and easy to use. This endorsement triggered a wave of downloads, propelling Arattai to the No. 1 spot on both iOS and Android app stores.
