Arratai App Review

I expected reviewing this app to take some time, but it was immediately clear how poor it is. The debate over the name feels laughable when the app has so many fundamental flaws. It comes across as a cleaned-up ShareChat or Moj rather than an “Indianized WhatsApp.” Like much of Zoho’s output, it focuses on quantity over quality. They even bothered to release an Android TV app, yet didn’t bother clarifying where chats are stored. WhatsApp, even years ago when privacy awareness was lower, openly explained its end-to-end encryption and local storage model. In contrast, this app feels like a student-level WhatsApp clone you’d find on GitHub. The website also reflects that amateurish feel.

When I looked for details on security, I found nothing beyond empty statements like:

“Arattai was designed with a strong focus on privacy and security.”

“Arattai strives to provide a safe communication experience for everyone.”

“With several privacy and security features and settings, Arattai strives to provide a safe communication experience for everyone.”

Four sentences of filler, zero real information. Their privacy policy—generated using freeprivacypolicygenerator.com—confirms the lack of seriousness.

Building a chat app is notoriously difficult. Even giants like Google (Allo) and smaller but respected players like Signal have struggled. Success depends on the network effect—the sheer number of possible user-to-user connections. The math is simple:

2 users → 1 connection

3 users → 3 connections

1 million users → 499,999,999,500,000 connections

WhatsApp’s 3 billion users → 4,499,999,998,500,000,000 connections

Humanity’s 8 billion people → 31,999,999,996,000,000,000 possible connections (via universal methods like email/SMS)

WhatsApp not only leads in scale, but also in quality. Its decision to store chats locally was revolutionary—leading to near-instant startup speeds and genuine privacy (with encrypted backups later solving the history loss problem). Even under court order, WhatsApp cannot hand over chat histories. That’s privacy by design. Ironically, WhatsApp achieves real privacy with fewer words than Arattai uses to pad its claims.

By comparison, Arattai is an embarrassment in the messaging domain - Brownie points for the name though.