Zoho founder Sridhar Vembu sets record straight on Arattai data, hosting and development

Zoho founder Sridhar Vembu on Tuesday clarified misinformation regarding the development, data hosting, and operations of the company’s products, including its homegrown messaging app Arattai, amid a sudden surge in the app’s popularity.

Vembu took to X (formerly Twitter) to state that all Zoho products are developed in India, with the company’s global headquarters in Chennai, and that it pays taxes on its global income in India.

He said Indian customer data is hosted domestically in Mumbai, Delhi, and Chennai, and an additional data centre is planned in Odisha.

“We have over 18 data centers globally and they host the respective country or regional data. We are committed to hosting each country data in their own jurisdiction,” Vembu said.

“All our services run on hardware we own and software frameworks we developed, on top of open source like Linux OS and Postgres database. We do not host our products on AWS or Azure. Arattai, specifically, is not hosted on AWS, Azure, or GCloud. Some services are used only for regional switching nodes to speed up traffic,” he added.

He also clarified that Zoho’s developer accounts on the Apple App Store and Google Play Store list the US office address due to early testing and not as an indication of data hosting.

Earlier in the day, Vembu announced that Zoho is in discussions with iSpirt, the think tank behind the technical framework for the Unified Payments Interface (UPI), to standardise and publish open messaging protocols for Arattai.

“These systems need to be interoperable like UPI and email, not closed like WhatsApp today. We do not want to be a monopoly ever,” he said, adding that iSpirt co-founder Sharad Sharma will guide the effort.

Arattai, launched in 2021, has witnessed a sudden surge in user adoption. According to Vembu, new sign-ups jumped from around 3,000 per day to 3.5 lakh in just three days, a 100-fold increase. The app has climbed to the top of the Apple App Store and is on track to enter the top 100 on Google Play.

“This exponential growth has prompted us to add infrastructure on an emergency basis and fine-tune the code to address emerging issues,” Vembu said, noting that a major feature update and capacity expansion have been planned for November.

The surge coincides with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s call for citizens to adopt swadeshi products.

IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw recently announced switching to Zoho tools for documents, spreadsheets, and presentations, and conducted a cabinet briefing using Zoho Show. Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal said that he and his team have shifted to Arattai, calling it a “Made in India” product that embodies the swadeshi spirit.

Arattai, which means “casual chat” in Tamil, allows users to send text and voice messages, make audio and video calls, share photos and documents, host instant or scheduled meetings for up to 250 attendees, and view ephemeral stories.