Arattai is a Tamil word meaning banter or gossip, it’s also the name of a messaging software developed by the Indian IT firm Zoho of Sridhar Vembu.

“You’ve seen many competitors to WhatsApp emerge over the last few years, Telegram, Signal and many others. I would say even locally, you’ve had some,” said Anirudh Suri, non-resident scholar at Carnegie India who works at the intersection of technology and geopolitics.

Suri was on The Gist, answering questions about Arattai and its larger implications for India’s ecosystem where such products have been launched and failed in the past, Koo for instance, which was the Indian twitter.

“I think it’s never too late to start, to mount a challenge to a company or a product like WhatsApp. I think there are many unknowns today for anyone to defi

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