Zoho's Arattai sees 100x surge in traffic amid Aatmanirbhar push, founder Vembu highlights long-term vision

New Delhi [India], September 29 (ANI): Indian-made messaging app Arattai, developed by Zoho, has witnessed a massive surge in usage in recent days amid the growing sentiment for homegrown applications under the Aatmanirbhar Bharat initiative.

According to Zoho’s founder Sridhar Vembu, the app recorded a 100x increase in traffic within just three days, with new sign-ups rising dramatically from 3,000 per day to 350,000 per day.

“We are adding infrastructure on an emergency basis for another potential 100x peak surge. That is how exponentials work,” Vembu shared in a social media post, highlighting the pace of adoption.

The sudden spike has prompted Zoho to work on strengthening Arattai’s backend and addressing technical challenges.

“As we add a lot more infrastructure, we are also fine-tuning and updating the code to fix issues as they arise. We have all-hands-on-deck working flat out,” Vembu said.

He also revealed that Zoho had originally planned a major release for Arattai by November, which was supposed to bring new features, larger capacity, and a marketing push. However, the exponential growth arrived earlier than expected.

“We have a lot more planned for Arattai, please give us some time. Thank you for your patience and support! Jai Hind,” he added.

The development comes as Zoho faces questions about a potential stock market listing in India. Responding to such speculation, Vembu clarified that projects like Arattai might not have been possible if Zoho operated as a listed public company.

“Arattai would very likely not have been built by a public company that faces quarter-to-quarter financial pressure. It was a ‘hopelessly foolish’ project, and even our employees had expressed scepticism that Arattai would ever gain any traction,” he explained.

Vembu also emphasized Zoho’s focus on long-term research and development over short-term profits.

He noted that Zoho has several ambitious projects in the pipeline, including work on compilers, databases, operating systems, security, hardware, chip design, robotics, and AI.

The company has also invested in multiple R&D-intensive firms that may not generate immediate returns.

“Zoho is a kind of an industrial research lab that also makes money to fund itself. We essentially ignore short-term profits, as long as we don’t lose money. And we have a culture of founders and senior executives living frugally, like how good scientists and engineers in ISRO would live. To us that is the essence of Bharat,” Vembu stated.

He compared the approach to Japan’s development model during its growth phase.

“Imagine saying all that to Wall Street or Dalal Street!” he remarked, highlighting why Zoho is not in a rush to go public.

Earlier, Ashwini Vaishnaw, Union Minister for Railways, Information & Broadcasting, Electronics & Information Technology endorsed Zoho’s platform for documents, spreadsheets urging others to use the same.

“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 and services.” the Minister said in his post on X. (ANI)

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