Swadeshi push for Arattai raises questions on data privacy; Zoho’s Sridhar Vembu clears the air

In recent days, Zoho’s Swadeshi alternatives to tech platforms have become the preferred choice for Union ministers and government offices. After announcing the switch to Zoho’s business products, Union electronic and IT minister Ashwini Vaishnaw met the entire executive leadership team of the company on Monday, including founder Sridhar Vembu and CEO Mani Vembu.

After Arattai—Zoho’s key contender for replacing Meta’s WhatsApp as India’s messaging platform—saw a 100-fold jump in daily sign-ups since the government push, discussions on Zoho as the forerunner in building truly desi applications have dominated popular discussion forums.

That said, concerns about data privacy have also been raised. Founder Sridhar Vembu addressed misconceptions about where Zoho’s products are being developed and where user data is stored.

In a post on X, Vembu said that the company has laid immense emphasis on developing all its products, including Arattai, in India, with its global headquarters based in Chennai, and taxes paid in India on its global income.

While it operates in over 80 countries, Indian user data stays within India across data centres in Mumbai, Delhi, and Chennai. Odisha will be added soon to the list. Globally, Zoho runs 18 data centres, each hosting data locally for its respective region.

“All our services run on hardware we own and software frameworks we developed, on top of open source like Linux OS and Postgres database. We do not host our products on AWS or Azure. Arattai, specifically, is not hosted on AWS or Azure or GCloud. We use some of those services for regional switching nodes to speed up traffic but data is not stored in them. We are adding many such "points of presence" (POPs) as we speak,” Vembu added.

The company also explained that its U.S. address on app store listings is due to legacy account creation during early testing. Reiterating its stance, Vembu said, “We are proudly 'Made in India, Made for the World' and we mean it.” The clarification reinforces the company’s positioning around privacy, a key differentiator that it claims to set the app apart from competing platforms by prioritising data protection and user trust.