‘Arattai is on the surface a simple product but it has a lot of depth inside’: Sridhar Vembu

In a candid social media post, Sridhar Vembu, founder and CEO of Zoho Corporation, explained the layers of Arattai – the viral, homegrown messaging app that aims to take on WhatsApp.

Sridhar Vembu reveals the tech layers of Arattai

Vembu said the app is “simple on the surface but with a lot of depth inside.”

In the post on X, the Zoho boss said that at the heart of Arattai lies the highly tested messaging and audiovisual (AV) framework – a “real-time workhorse” refined by his team over 15 years. 

This technology allows lightning-fast connections for calls and meetings, which has been an indicator of the company’s broader software ecosystem. 

“This is the backbone of Zoho,” Vembu wrote, crediting his dedicated teams for ongoing improvisations to keep the systems protected against threats. 

Vembu also shared that Zoho’s distributed computing framework, perfected over two decades, enables efficient workload distribution across servers and databases while ensuring fault tolerance, performance monitoring and robust security.

This same infrastructure, the Zoho founder noted, supports many of the brand’s other products and safeguards the company’s cloud ecosystem.

“Our staying power comes from the depth of all the R&D we do,” Vembu wrote, adding that he has now moved full-time into research and development, hinting that users can expect to see “many more innovations” emerging from the company’s labs in the near future.

Sridhar Vembu praised the perseverance of the Arattai team, acknowledging their dedication over more than five years of development.

Drawing a parallel between engineering and spiritual discipline, the entrepreneur said, “Being a dedicated engineer is like being a Rishi,” insisting that his team remain focused regardless of external praise or criticism.

Arattai is on the surface a simple product but it has a lot of depth inside.

Let me list the engineering frameworks (all homegrown) that power Arattai.

First is what we call our messaging/AV framework. This has been the "real time" workhorse of Zoho for a while and this is…

— Sridhar Vembu (@svembu) October 4, 2025

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