Arattai improves yet sees low usage after climb to India's top social chart
The chatter about Arattai has been hard to miss. After a burst of updates that cleaned up bugs and sharpened its features, the India-born messenger seemed ready to take on the big players. For a moment it even topped the country’s social-app charts, sparking a flood of posts on X and Reddit.
Many started to wonder if a home-grown option could finally dent the grip of the global giants. But that buzz faded fast. Even with the polish and a short-lived visibility spike, daily active users slipped back toward their old numbers, leaving the team with a strange paradox: a nicer product that nobody is really opening.
Mohit Pandey, who writes about AI with a dash of humor, summed up the vibe in one line.
A few weeks back, Arattai looked like it was on the upswing. The app briefly hit the top of India’s social rankings. Countless posts on X and Reddit d
A few weeks ago, Arattai looked like it was on the rise. The app briefly shot to the top of India's social charts. Countless posts on X and Reddit d 📣 Want to advertise in AIM?
Book here Mohit Pandey Mohit writes about AI in simple, explainable, and often funny words. He's especially passionate about chatting with those building AI for Bharat, with the occasional detour into AGI. We Need More Polymath Engineers And organisations need to pave the way for that.
BharatGPT & Neysa Lay Out India's Strong Push for AI Independence "50,000 developers, researchers and enterprises have used BharatGPT and created thousands of AI agents." The Internet is Breaking. During the recent global AWS outage, New Relic's engineers identified the issue 27 minutes before AWS informed its customers. The AI divide could be worse than the digital divide, warn experts building India's foundation models.
The Founder Who Walked Away from YC "Pessimists sound smart, but optimists make all the money," Supermemory founder Dhravya Shah said. 'We Are in the MS-DOS Era of AI' Abhishek Mathur of Figma says the next phase of AI will be defined by better design Unpacking India's Data Centre Boom India generates 20% of global data but stores only 3% of it locally.
Arattai rolled out a new patch that adds end-to-end encryption, a green shield icon, and a short video from co-founder Sridhar Vembu urging people to update. The move looks solid on paper, but the download figures tell another story. In October the app surged to the top of India’s charts with about 1.36 crore installs; by November that number had collapsed to roughly two lakh.
It’s hard to say whether the security upgrade alone will stop the slide. The update is probably the biggest technical effort the team has made so far, yet the sharp dip hints at lingering adoption hurdles. A few weeks ago X and Reddit were buzzing about Arattai’s comeback, but today the threads are almost dead.
Mohit Pandey points out the oddity: a better product that hardly anyone is using. I’m left wondering if the new encryption will pull people back or if something else is driving the decline. At this point the numbers are louder than any promise.
Related Reading
AI Tools & Apps Sider 5.0 Adds Wisebase‑Powered Deep Research Agent to Top AI Chrome Extensions
AI Tools & Apps 9% trust AI code alone; 58% see entry tasks cut, 63% see paths, 59% foresee roles
AI Tools & Apps Adobe launches LLM Optimizer to enhance brand visibility in AI chat services
Common Questions Answered
What caused Arattai's brief rise to the top of India's social‑app rankings?
Aratti's surge was driven by a series of updates that tightened its feature set, fixed bugs, and generated buzz on platforms like X and Reddit. The improvements made the homegrown messenger appear ready to challenge global competitors, prompting a spike in downloads.
How many downloads did Arattai record in October compared to November?
In October, Arattai achieved 1.36 crore (13.6 million) downloads, propelling it to the summit of India's social charts. By contrast, November saw a sharp decline with only two lakh (200,000) installs, highlighting a dramatic drop in user acquisition.
What new security feature did Arattai introduce in its latest update?
The latest Arattai update added end‑to‑end encryption, signified by a green shield icon, to enhance user privacy. Co‑founder Sridhar Vembu directly appealed to users to install the patch, hoping the security boost would retain or attract more users.
Did the addition of end‑to‑end security reverse Arattai's declining user numbers?
Despite the introduction of end‑to‑end security, the numbers did not improve; installs fell from 1.36 crore in October to just two lakh in November. The article suggests it remains unclear whether the privacy upgrade alone can halt the downward trend.