Zoho’s Mani Vembu on Arattai: “Interoperability can break messaging monopolies”
“It’s always the product that defines the momentum and the retention,” Zoho CEO Mani Vembu said.
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Zoho’s Arattai messenger has witnessed explosive growth in recent weeks, but the surge, according to Zoho leadership, was not orchestrated. “It is all not planned well or it was not at all planned,” Mani Vembu, Zoho CEO said, explaining that ministerial endorsements followed years of government engagement on Zoho’s email and office software.
Arattai had been in development since 2018 and launched in 2021. The company had been quietly investing in performance upgrades and infrastructure. “We have been building our infrastructure for that and so that we can do a major announcement. But then like say suddenly all this happened, like say we are like say 60-70% prepared,” Mani said.
Usage has skyrocketed. “While it’s early, I can say meetings have crossed 100,000 a day, and calls are at half a million daily, growing 20–30% every day. Daily active users are also rising sharply. In just a week, sign-ups jumped from 3,000 a day to more than 3–4 million total. Retention rates are healthy and improving," Vembu said.
There’s been speculation about Arattai evolving into a Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) with open protocols. Addressing it, Vembu said, "Today, messaging apps build monopolies because sender and receiver both need the same app. With email, it’s different—Gmail, Outlook, Zoho Mail all work together. If messaging had similar protocols, monopolies would break and differentiation would come from user experience, not network effects. We believe interoperability standards would give users real choice."
On privacy concerns, Vembu was blunt. “Whatever is the requirement from the government, we have to make sure that we comply,” he said.
Vembu believes growth will continue beyond ministerial backing. “There is a general awareness on these data sovereignty issues, and then general interest towards using the local Swadeshi application… it also depends on how this app is going to evolve. Because it’s always the product that defines the momentum and the retention,” Vembu said.
