Why Arattai by Zoho Won’t Replace WhatsApp in India
Summary
- Zoho's social networking app "Arattai" gained a sudden hype in last 3 days.
- It is a completely made in India.
- But will it be able to replace WhatsApp? Let's find out!
Arattai, an Indian homegrown messaging app by Zoho, has recently gained a lot of popularity in the last three days. This app has recently recorded daily sign-ups from 3K/day to 350k/day sign-ups. This sudden response is a mix of government endorsements and social media. But it might not be able to replace the global messaging app, WhatsApp. Let’s find out why!
What is Arattai?
Arattai is a social networking app like WhatsApp and Telegram. This word Arattai is taken from the Tamil language, which means “casual chat”. It was actually launched in 2021 by Zoho Corporation. In per terms of features and use case, Arattai is very similar to WhatsApp.
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You can do one-to-one chats, group chats, share images, files, location and more. You can also do meetings and upload stories. This app even has multi-device support, which includes desktop apps and Android TV integration.
The standout part is the privacy features of this app. Arattai provides end-to-end encrypted calls like on WhatsApp. Zoho also promises not to use its users’ data as a source of revenue. It means the company will not use or sell your private information to generate revenue through targeted advertisements or data sales.
Why Arattai Won’t Replace WhatsApp
Although, Arattai can be a great replacement for WhatsApp, there are few things it won’t be able to fulfill and will result in getting failed.
1. The Huge User Base
WhatsApp today has more than 500 million users and is pretty much installed on every smartphone out there. Moving such a massive user base to any other platform is next to impossible. But if, for some reason, WhatsApp ever gets banned, then this new platform could be the one where people might actually shift.
2. Still Doesn’t Ensure Complete Privacy
Arattai does offer end-to-end encryption for calls, but when it comes to chats, there’s still no confirmation. In simple terms, the messages aren’t encrypted yet, something WhatsApp has been doing for years. So yes, privacy concerns around chats are still very much there.
3. Network Effect
This means that if your network of friends, collegues and family is using WhatsApp, then automatically you will not have a choice. Breaking that network effect will be the hardest part for the Arattai app team. Even if they do break the network, it will still take up a lot of time.
Conclusion
Overall, the chances of Arattai replacing WhatsApp are pretty low. Still, there are a couple of scenarios where it could actually happen. For one, the government is already pushing and promoting the app, so people might start adopting it as a homegrown alternative.
And second, if the government ever decides to ban U.S.-based apps just like it did with the Chinese ones, then Arattai could automatically step in to take WhatsApp’s place.
That’s it, peeps! Stay tuned for more like this in future.
