Before Zoho Arattai, India had Hike Messenger—a popular local app that challenged WhatsApp and gained fame across the nation.

In India, Zoho’s Arattai instant chat program has been very popular lately. The app is hailed as a formidable domestic alternative to WhatsApp, including a number of cutting-edge features not found on its competitor’s platform. Zoho’s Chief Scientist, Sridhar Vembu, has reported a 100-fold increase in new Arattai sign-ups in just three days, indicating a tremendous surge in user adoption. There are now 350,000 daily new registrations, up from 3,000 the previous day.

Hike Messenger was the dominant WhatsApp user.

In the past, an Indian app has contested WhatsApp’s hegemony in the nation. Before India got 4G, Hike Messenger was a well-liked local substitute. Tiger Global, SoftBank, and Tencent were among the renowned investors drawn to Hike’s initial plan to compete with WhatsApp by developing a youth-oriented software, which ultimately resulted in a $1.4 billion valuation in 2016.

Features of a hike Messenge

Later, in April 2019, messenger changed its name to Hike Sticker Chat, emphasizing an experience that was centered around stickers. It had many features, such as a large selection of stickers in multiple languages, private hidden chats, an integrated wallet for payments, and social tools like bill splitting, tales, timelines, and event invites. Along with offering special features like offline messaging through SMS fallback and app customization, it made an effort to be a complete “super app.”

also read : Aravind Srinivas Becomes India’s Youngest Billionaire

The reason behind Hike’s shutdown

In the end, Hike messenger found it difficult to draw customers away from competitors, especially WhatsApp, which has over 400 million users in India, despite providing this extensive feature set. Kavin Bharti Mittal, the founder of the startup, said that “the global effects were too strong,” meaning the messenger app was unable to effectively compete with larger international platforms, which is why it was shut down in 2021.

Zoho has dubbed its new messaging app Arattai in the meanwhile. Name “Arattai” means “general conversation” or “gossip” and is borrowed from Tamil.