Zoho Corp’s homegrown messaging app Arattai has exploded in popularity over the past week, with some thinking it can take on Meta-owned WhatsApp in the Indian market.
But amid all the positive chatter, some privacy-conscious users have pointed out that Arattai lacks a very important feature that could disadvantage it when compared to WhatsApp and most other available messaging apps — default end-to-end encryption (E2EE).
Arattai vs WhatsApp: What is the privacy concern?
Zoho promotes Arattai as a privacy-first service, with all user data stored in India. Voice and video calls are end-to-end encrypted, but standard messages currently lack this safeguard. However, a ‘secret chat’ option does offer secure messaging, and full encryption is said to be on the way.
According to users on various social media, Arattai provides E2EE for calls and videos, having to shift to “secret messages” for the feature in chats is inconvenient and leaves other one-on-one and group chats outside the privacy protection.
Notably, alternatives, including market leader WhatsApp and other apps like Telegram and Signal, have default E2EE protection across call, chat, and video functions.
Addressing the issue on social media, the Arattai official account on X acknowledged this and told concerned users that “Privacy is super important to us, and end-to-end encryption for chats is something we’re actively working on.”
