Will WhatsApp lose its largest market, India?
The Indian made Arattai is gaining popularity, fast replacing the US messenger app’s dominance. WhatsApp’s 540 million Indian users constitute 200 million more than the total population of the US. The Indian market is key to the US app’s huge valuation. Arattai is gaining popularity like other products of Zoho Corporation, the only one in the world to compete with Microsoft.
“I am so impressed with the capabilities of Zoho Writer, Zoho Sheets and Zoho Presentation. This is really good. I think I will be shifting to Zoho at the earliest.” Ashwini Viashnaw said in a video post on social media on September 22, evening. In a Twitter post, he wrote: “I am moving to Zoho — our own Swadeshi platform for documents, spreadsheets & presentations. I urge all to join PM Shri @narendramodi Ji’s call for Swadeshi by adopting indigenous products & services.” In a reply, Sridhar Vembu wrote: “Thank you, Sir, this is a huge morale boost for our engineers who have worked hard for over two decades to build our product suite. We will make you proud and make our nation proud. Jai Hind,” wrote Vembu in a post on X.
Arattai Messenger, an application developed by the home-grown Zoho Corporation – originally known as AdventNet – is penetrating rapidly. People have started creating groups and conducting meetings on Arattai. Over 1.2 million central government employees have created email IDs on Zoho Mail after the NIC completed an audit of the company’s privacy security parameters, security practices, code, and data centre. The Government of India praises its efforts to develop foreign alternative tech products as part of its mission to transform India from a “service nation” to a “product nation.” Earlier this year, Zoho won India’s web browser challenge as assigned by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY).
In technical terms, Arattai, meaning ‘chat’ in Tamil, is a home-grown freeware instant cross-messaging platform equipped with Voice over IP (VoIP). Originally launched in January 2021, the app was first tested among Zoho employees before making it available to the public. With the government actively promoting Swadeshi as part of the Atmanirbhar mission, Zoho gained significant attention from both the government and the public. Following the US’s punitive trade measures against India, the Indian public began considering the adoption of domestically made products and services. Since mid-2010, when WhatsApp launched in India, the messenger app has grown significantly, reaching approximately 540 million users, which is 200 million more than the entire population of its home country, the United States. Driven by the customer base in India, WhatsApp’s valuation soared to the virtual stratosphere. Facebook acquired it in February 2014 for $19 billion from its founders, Jan Koum and Brian Acton, in what was termed the largest deal of combined cash and stock by Facebook, which was renamed Meta in October 2021.
Since September 2025, Arattai has experienced rapid daily download growth. This unprecedented surge pushed the platform to a brief stress point, prompting Zoho to quickly scale server capacity and expand its infrastructure.
WhatsApp’s monopoly position gave it dictating power, which the hapless users had to accept. Last year, the Competition Commission of India fined Meta Rs 213.14 crore for abusing its dominant position by collecting user data and sharing it with other Meta companies. The Commission issued cease-and-desist directions while ordering Meta and WhatsApp to implement certain behavioural remedies within a defined timeline. The Commission delineated the market for OTT messaging apps through smartphones and the market for online display advertising in India. WhatsApp has been a dominant player in the Indian market for OTT messaging apps. Furthermore, it was also found that Meta holds a leading position compared to its competitors in the online display advertising in India.
In January 2021, WhatsApp notified users about changes to its terms of service and privacy policies. The company stated that, effective February 8, 2021, users must accept these new terms, which include an expanded scope of data collection and mandatory data sharing with Meta companies, to continue using WhatsApp. Under the previous privacy policy dated August 25, 2016, WhatsApp users were given the option to decide whether they wanted to share their data with Facebook. In 2021, WhatsApp updated its policy to make data sharing with Meta mandatory for all users, eliminating the previous option to opt out. Thus, users were compelled to accept the new terms, which included data-sharing with Meta.
Even though Arattai still has a long way to go before surpassing WhatsApp, Zoho can position Arattai with better features tailored for the convenience and safety of the Indian users. Users are happy with its features and meeting quality. Its business features are already known to be straightforward, focusing on channels and content sharing, making it more suitable for small users. Additionally, it is comparable to Microsoft Teams in terms of scheduling meetings. Within a year, WhatsApp may witness a significant decline in traffic and user engagement, and over time, Indians may shift back to WhatsApp if the US continues its hostile trade practices approach.
Zoho Corporation is a classic example of how an entity grows quickly with a focus on small and medium businesses, where the space for growth is always large. Its founder also took a bold step to build a world-class technology company in a remote village and show the world India can do what the best in the world does for the world.
Zoho Corporation, with its main office in Silaraipuravu Village, Mathalamparai, in the Tenkasi district of Tamil Nadu, is a native tech conglomerate founded by Sridhar Vembu and Tony Thomas. While the Vembu siblings own a 92 per cent stake in the company, the co-founder owns an eight per cent stake. Zoho, which offers a broader and superior suite of products, could be a potential Indian challenger to Google and Microsoft.
