New Delhi, Oct. 1 -- Zoho Corp's homegrown messaging app Arattai has exploded in popularity over the past week, with some thinking it can take on Meta-owned WhatsApp in the Indian market.

But, amid all the positive chatter, some privacy conscious users have pointed out that that Arattai lacks a very important feature that could be disadvantageous for it when compared to WhatsApp and most other available messaging apps - default end-to-end encryption (E2EE).

Zoho promotes Arattai as a privacy-first service, with all user data stored in India. Voice and video calls are end-to-end encrypted, but standard messages currently lack this safeguard. However, a 'secret chat' option does offer secure messaging, and full encryption is said to be on...