According to Financial Times News, India’s government is mounting a major push for homegrown messaging platform Arattai, with top ministers including Piyush Goyal and Amit Shah publicly endorsing the Zoho-owned app. The campaign has driven Arattai’s daily signups from just 3,000 to 350,000 in October alone, with 12 million of its total 15 million downloads coming last month. Meanwhile, WhatsApp saw only 7 million downloads in the same period, though it maintains 530 million monthly active users in India. Zoho founder Sridhar Vembu confirmed the company is adding infrastructure “on an emergency basis” to handle the surge, while noting his engineers remain in India amid Trump’s H-1B visa restrictions.
The tech nationalism reality check
So here’s the thing about these government-backed app surges: we’ve seen this movie before. Remember Koo? It was supposed to be India’s Twitter killer back in 2020, and now it’s shut down. The pattern is becoming familiar – big political push, massive download spike, then the reality of competing with established platforms sets in. And let’s be honest, switching messaging apps is hard. Your friends, family, work groups – they’re all on WhatsApp. Being the “second option” as MediaNama’s Nikhil Pahwa puts it, might be the ceiling here.
This is bigger than just an app
What’s really interesting is how this fits into India’s broader tech sovereignty push. We’re talking about a country that sees its “digital dependence on US technology” as a “far deeper strategic risk” according to Delhi think tank GTRI. And with Trump’s 50% tariffs threatening Indian exports, there’s definitely an economic nationalism angle too. The government isn’t just cheering for Arattai – they’ve actually moved over 1.1 million officials to Zoho’s email services. That’s serious commitment.
The monetization mountain
Now here’s the billion-dollar question: can anyone actually make money in India’s app market? The numbers from Sensor Tower are staggering – 24.3 billion app downloads in 2024, 1.13 trillion hours spent in apps, but only $1 billion in total spending. That’s… not great. For context, that’s less than many single apps make in the US. So even if Arattai captures significant market share, turning users into revenue is a completely different challenge. When you’re competing with free, how do you build a sustainable business?
Privacy and politics
I can’t help but notice the timing of Arattai’s end-to-end encryption announcement last week. Better late than never, I suppose, but they still haven’t implemented it for group chats. And Vembu’s position on Modi’s National Security Advisory Board certainly raises eyebrows about the app’s independence. When your CEO is advising the government on security matters, it’s reasonable to wonder about data access and privacy boundaries. These aren’t trivial concerns in a country that’s seen its share of digital rights battles.
The Silicon Valley challenge
Basically, India wants what China has – a thriving domestic tech ecosystem that doesn’t rely on American platforms. But building that from scratch while competing with established giants is incredibly difficult. Zoho’s global success with 130 million office software users shows Indian tech can compete internationally. But messaging is different – it’s about network effects, and WhatsApp’s 530 million Indian users represent a massive moat. The government’s Digital India initiative provides policy support, but ultimately users will decide whether Arattai becomes a real alternative or just another patriotic experiment.
