WhatsApp doesn’t store our chats but can we say the same about Zoho’s Arattai?

Zoho’s Arattai has suddenly become the talk of the town. The Indian messaging app saw its downloads shoot up 100 times in just a few days, thanks to government endorsements and a growing curiosity about homegrown apps. It’s packed with all the features you’d expect such as audio and video calls, group chats, document sharing, and even channels for creators. On the surface, it looks like a serious WhatsApp rival.

But here’s the thing-while Arattai keeps voice and video calls secure with end-to-end encryption, text chats don’t get the same treatment. In simple terms, that means your messages aren’t scrambled in a way that only the person you’re chatting with can read. Zoho stores them on its servers, which could theoretically be accessed by the company or, in a worst-case scenario, by hackers if the servers were ever breached.

Zoho says all data is stored safely in India and isn’t shared with third parties, which is a plus. But that’s not the same as end-to-end encryption, which is the gold standard for private messaging today. If you’ve been using WhatsApp, Signal, or iMessage, you probably take this kind of privacy for granted.

So what does this mean for someone thinking about switching to Arattai? The app is feature-rich, user-friendly, and homegrown, which makes it appealing. But if you care a lot about text message privacy, it’s not quite at the same level as WhatsApp or Signal yet.