October 1, 2025

In a proud moment for India’s tech scene, Union Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal announced on Monday that he has joined Arattai — a messaging app made right here in India! Sharing his excitement on X, he wrote, “Nothing beats the feeling of using a #Swadeshi product. So proud to be on @Arattai, a #MadeInIndia messaging platform that brings India closer.” Arattai, which means “casual talk” or “chit-chat” in Tamil, is developed by Zoho, a cool tech company based in Chennai. The app was launched back in 2021 to challenge WhatsApp, but recently it has shot up in popularity thanks to public endorsements by big government names. Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan is a big fan and urged everyone to use Arattai as part of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Swadeshi movement promoting Indian digital products. IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw also showed his support by switching to Zoho’s office tools for official work, declaring on X, “I am moving to Zoho, our own Swadeshi platform for documents, spreadsheets & presentations.” Zoho’s founder Sridhar Vembu called this ministerial backing “a huge morale boost for our engineers who have worked hard for over two decades to build our product suite.” And boy, did this support spark fireworks! Arattai’s traffic jumped a whopping 100 times in just three days, with daily new sign-ups soaring from 3,000 to a blazing 350,000 users. To handle this rush, Zoho is rapidly boosting its technology to prepare for yet another possible 100x increase in demand. “As we add a lot more infrastructure, we are also fine-tuning and updating the code to fix issues as they arise. We have all-hands-on-deck working flat out,” Vembu shared. Last week, Arattai proudly took the top spot in the social media category on Apple’s App Store in India, proving it’s no small player anymore. What’s Inside Arattai? The app offers almost everything WhatsApp has: text messaging, voice and video calls, media sharing, big group chats (up to 1,000 people!), stories, and broadcast channels. Plus, it’s designed to run smoothly even on low-end phones and where internet is weak — a big win for users in small towns and villages. But here’s the tiny catch: While voice and video calls are securely encrypted, text messages don’t yet have full end-to-end encryption. WhatsApp still leads with complete chat security. Zoho promises this is coming soon and says, “end-to-end encryption for chats is under development and coming soon.” With heavy ministerial backing and rising user love, Arattai is speeding on its way to become India’s favorite Swadeshi messaging app. Will WhatsApp finally feel the heat? Stay tuned!

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Tags: Arattai app, Swadeshi movement, Piyush goyal, Zoho, Indian messaging app, Digital india,