Zoho’s Arattai plans UPI-like open chat system, Sridhar Vembu says 'don't want to be monopoly'

Zoho founder Sridhar Vembu on Tuesday said the company has initiated discussions with iSpirt, the think tank credited with the technical groundwork for the Unified Payments Interface (UPI), to standardise and publish open messaging protocols for its homegrown app Arattai.

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

The announcement comes at a time when Arattai, launched in 2021, is witnessing a sudden surge in popularity. The app has jumped to the top of Apple’s App Store rankings in India and is closing in on the top 100 on Google Play, from earlier positions outside the top 500.

Daily sign-ups have soared from around 3,000 to nearly 3.5 lakh in three days, Vembu said.

“We are adding infrastructure on an emergency basis for another potential 100x peak surge… As a matter of fact, we had planned on a big release by November, with a lot of the features you expect, a huge capacity addition and a marketing push. And then it suddenly went vertical!” he said on Monday.

The growth of Arattai coincides with the government’s push for the adoption of indigenous digital platforms.

IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw last week announced that he had adopted Zoho’s productivity tools for official work.

On Monday, 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, meaning “casual chat” in Tamil, offers text and voice messaging, video and audio calls, ephemeral stories, broadcast channels, and meeting features for up to 250 attendees.

Developers caution that the app will have to overcome significant hurdles in reliability, scalability and end-to-end encryption if it is to challenge WhatsApp, owned by US-based Meta, which dominates India’s messaging market.

Users have also reported glitches and crashes in recent days as the platform struggled to keep up with the traffic spike.