Opinion The Arattai challenge: Can it master the social grammar of building global tech?

We seem captivated by the idea that India can finally have a technology product of its own, simply because we have not been a tech-product nation. But in reality, global champions are not scaled by patriotic slogans or technical prowess alone. They rise because they achieve critical mass, often well before the state itself lends its umbrella. WhatsApp did not secure sovereign backing until it had already built a massive consumer base. The same was true for Microsoft, Google, Amazon, WeChat, Alibaba and Spotify. They grew by embedding themselves into daily life, and only later did state power or regulatory protection arrive to reinforce them.

If India’s ambition is to build tech-products of global stature, we must remember that what matters is the social grammar of adoption — the way technology seeps into habits, trust networks and cultural practices. That is where Indian innovation will need to truly prove its worth.

The first of these is the reality of network effects. A messenger app acquires value only when a user’s circle is already present. A teenager joins because her classmates are active. A grandmother signs up because the family group has shifted. A young employee adopts it because the office has mandated the switch. Unless Arattai builds such clusters of activity over time, it will remain an icon on a phone once the initial euphoria slows.

Second is the cultural appeal of identity. In India today, choosing a swadeshi product carries symbolic weight. Installing Arattai is, in part, an assertion of self-reliance. This helps at the outset, but it cannot carry adoption forever.

Third is language. India is not one market but many, woven together by diverse tongues and idioms. For an app to reach the next hundred million users, it must speak not only English but also Tamil, Hindi, Bengali, Telugu and beyond. Interfaces, stickers, emojis and even customer support must feel native. With today’s Indian technology stack, these are achievable.

Arattai positions itself as secure and encrypted, with servers located locally. One way to reinforce this confidence could be a public hackathon that challenges experts to break its encryption, turning scrutiny itself into a visibility test that builds wider trust.

Migration-friction also matters. Our personal lives are archived within WhatsApp groups and Telegram histories. Years of photographs, documents and conversations are tied up in those ecosystems. Switching is not like trying a new app. It is closer to moving house. Unless Arattai offers users a painless way to bring their histories, contacts and groups with them, the weight of inertia will keep them rooted to incumbents.

Behavioural habit is another invisible barrier. Humans resist change unless nudged. Once parents find that the school group has moved, or citizens see their panchayat alerts delivered on Arattai, the logic of inertia begins to reverse. Also, to displace an incumbent, a challenger must not only match but also surpass in ways that matter locally.

The history of adoption across industries reinforces this truth. From the early automobiles to the rise of aeroplanes, from the spread of mobile phones to the ubiquity of social media, the decisive factor was never just engineering. It was whether these technologies could integrate into everyday life, whether they could travel across trust, culture and habit.

The success of any Indian product that aspires to global stature will rest on how well it balances cultural moorings with digital impulses, how it builds an emotional pillar of trust alongside technological ease, and how it aligns all of this within a coherent social grammar. Without this balance, even the most well-funded or technically sophisticated innovation risks remaining a passing experiment rather than a lasting presence. We have already seen the fading out of products, despite heavy funding &/ high-profile endorsements, as in the case of Koo or ClubHouse or Hike.

For any Indian tech product aspiring to be globally relevant, the challenge is even greater. It must understand not only Indian cultures and languages but also the wider diversity of global habits, idioms and social practices. A product that can navigate nuances from São Paulo to Seoul, from Nairobi to New York, earns the right to be called global. That is how the big-technology firms remain relevant both locally and globally.

Arattai may or may not become a globally positioned or adopted app, but its journey will surely offer lessons for all those who aspire to build-in-India-for-the-world technology products. Respecting different ambitions is also important. Not every innovator seeks this path. Some may design primarily for India, and that ambition deserves recognition, for the entrepreneurs have bet their resources and talent on their goal. But then, will we still need to use WhatsApp to talk to non-Arattai users?

The writer is a corporate advisor and author of Family and Dhanda