Unplanned Success: What Arattai's Surge Teaches About Being Ready

Headline and Context

In October 2025, Zoho's messaging app Arattai saw a sudden rise in usage. Storyboard18 interviewed Zoho executive Mani Vembu about it on 9 October 2025. He said the surge was not planned, that ministerial endorsements followed years of government engagement with Zoho's email and office software, and, in his words, "It is all not planned well or it was not at all planned."

The facts as reported

According to the interview, Arattai had been in development from 2018 and launched in 2021. Zoho had been upgrading its performance and infrastructure, and Mani Vembu said the team was about 60 to 70% prepared for a major announcement when the surge arrived. He gave usage figures: meetings exceeded 100,000 per day, calls reached about half a million daily and were growing 20 to 30% each day, and sign-ups rose from 3,000 per day to more than 3 to 4 million in total within a week. He described retention as healthy and improving. These are company figures from a single interview, and we have not seen independent confirmation or later data.

“It's always the product that defines the momentum and the retention.”

His argument on interoperability

Mani Vembu argued that messaging apps create monopolies because both sender and receiver must use the same app. He contrasted this with email, where common protocols let people on different services exchange messages, and said: "We believe interoperability standards would give users real choice." On privacy, he said Zoho would comply with government requirements: "Whatever is the requirement from the government, we have to make sure that we comply." He expected growth to continue beyond ministerial backing because of awareness of data sovereignty and interest in local applications, adding: "It's always the product that defines the momentum and the retention." The interview did not discuss encryption or specific features.

Product lessons: our analysis

1. Build ahead of attention. The eight years between the start of development and the surge are the reason the product could handle sudden interest at all. Capacity planning is a product decision.

2. Plan for the day the spike comes. A team that says it was 60 to 70% prepared is describing a gap that users feel as slow loading or failures. Load testing, queue management and staged sign-ups should be in place before the story breaks.

3. Retention is the real test. Sign-ups from curiosity fade. The executive's own statement, that the product defines momentum and retention, is a fair standard. The relevant figures are weekly active users after the first month.

4. Network effects work against new entrants. An app is useful only if your contacts use it. Interoperability is a product strategy as well as a policy position: it lowers the barrier for newcomers. Whether it is achievable depends on rules and on the cooperation of larger players, which we cannot assess here.

5. Compliance is a feature. An app that operates under national rules must plan how it meets lawful requests. The executive's comment shows the company has chosen to comply, which has implications for privacy that users should understand. We have no details about what data is collected.

Cautions

A surge that follows public endorsement is not the same as organic demand. The long-run test is whether people keep using the product without prompting. The interview was given at the peak of attention, and companies tend to be optimistic at such moments. We recommend looking for independent usage data before drawing conclusions.

What a founder can do with this

• Create a "surge plan". Write what you will do if usage multiplies by ten in a week: extra servers, support staff, communications. • Measure retention from day one. Track cohorts, not totals. • Decide your stance on openness early. Whether to support integration with others affects architecture. • Be honest in public. A candid statement that the surge was unplanned builds more trust than a claim of foresight.

For small businesses

A homegrown messaging app can matter to firms that want to keep customer data within India. Evaluate any such tool as you would any vendor: ask about data location, support and what happens if you leave.

A note on reading surge stories

Attention cycles are short. A product that trends for a week has to earn the second week with reliability, and the third with usefulness. Founders who study Arattai should ask not only how it grew but what a team would need to have in place to keep a stranger who arrived by curiosity.