Another ‘Swadeshi’ moment beckons Indian tech platforms, which are back in conversation. There is a renewed push for Indian apps as alternatives to global platforms. While there may be reason to look back at a similar wave from a few years ago as a cautionary tale, founders insist home-grown apps now benefit from better underlying technology. Analysts point to a greater understanding of data sovereignty concerns, and breaking big tech monopolies. Practical cases should be the start point of the road to real adoption, not a fork.
The spotlight was re-trained on homegrown apps after the Indian government began adoption of the Chennai-based Zoho Corp’s services. On September 22, Union Minister of Electronics and Information Technology Ashwini Vaishnaw posted on X, “I am moving to Zoho—our own swadeshi platform for documents, spreadsheets and presentations.” Piyush Goyal, Union Minister for Commerce and Industry wrote on September 29, “So proud to be on Arattai, a made in India messaging platform that brings India closer.” On October 8, Union Home Minister Amit Shah posted, “I have switched to Zoho Mail”.
India’s revitalised interest in homegrown digital alternatives isn’t born from mere nostalgia or nationalist sentiment, though those emotions certainly provide fuel. This push is rooted in three interconnected strategic anxieties — data sovereignty, economic independence, and geopolitical resilience. In the tech sphere, one could hint at monopolies too. In India, Google’s Android and Chrome, Meta’s WhatsApp and Elon Musk’s X, are examples of market share, and indeed habit domination.
“In today’s digital economy, winner-takes-all dynamics dominate. Yet, there is no permanence to market pistons—stagnation invites disruption, and innovation always breeds new challengers. The renewed push for Indian apps is shaped as much by opportunity as by policy and geopolitics,” explains Prabhu Ram, Vice President for Industry Research Group (IRG) at CyberMedia Research (CMR), in a conversation with HT.
Ram notes that data sovereignty and privacy concerns are amplified as India tightens national security provisions, which also pushes ministries to adopt local platforms. In case of global geopolitical tensions, a nation’s infrastructure that relies on foreign foundations, faces the risk of exposure or instability.
India’s concerns include questions of data sovereignty—who owns Indian users’ data. A government that has built sophisticated and scalable digital public infrastructure such as UPI (the Unified Payments Interface) sees an opportunity to extend this localisation model into everyday consumer and enterprise applications.
Consumers and enterprises, at the same table?
This time, the made in India app push isn’t only a conversation with consumers at one end, but also covers businesses and enterprises. Zoho’s Mail, Writer and Show apps, for instance, would appeal to businesses with specific subscription plans for teams. Zoho Mail, for instance, is priced ₹99 per user per month with the Office Suite bundle. This competes with Google Workspace and Microsoft 365.
“We could see businesses shift to Zoho Mail if it offers equitable experiences and features. Perhaps the government could also consider giving a rebate or introducing reimbursement for a couple of years for users using Indian tech, to add monetary benefits to this shift,” Faisal Kawoosa, chief analyst at research firm Techarc, tells HT.
An inevitable question that goes far beyond patriotism, when it comes to enterprise deployment, is about data security and encryption. At this time, some of Zoho’s services do not have end to end encryption, also called E2E. “End to end encryption is a technical feature and that is coming. Trust is far more precious and we are earning that trust daily in the global market,” writes Sridhar Vembu, Co-founder and Chief Scientist at Zoho Corporation, on social media.
When pressed further by another user, he explained, “The data is stored in encrypted disk storage like a cloud service. No employee has access to it. When end to end encryption is rolled out, that cloud storage will be removed. It will only be there on the device.”
The companies Zoho wants to upstage, Microsoft and Google, both offer different methodologies of encryption. Microsoft offers end to end encryption managed by Microsoft’s infrastructure, while Google deploys CSE, or client-side encryption which gives an organisation direct control over encryption keys. This is an illustration of why Indian tech companies must move faster still.
Navigating to success
Indian navigation company MapmyIndia, founded in 1995, launched online maps in 2004, a year before Google Maps, in many countries. It has been a battle of persistence for Rohan Verma, Director at MapmyIndia, as the company battled Google’s monopoly over Android (an inevitable push for their own Maps app, over anything from other developers), but alongside but a navigational portfolio which includes mapping data, solutions for businesses, navigation systems pre-loaded in cars, APIs or application programming layer to work with platforms such as Alexa, AI tools and analytics.
Their Mappls app for Android and iOS which has found traction in recent years, finds itself in the spotlight again. There are real advantages to this app, including 3D navigation with exact lane guidance and integrating India’s digital addressing system DIGIPIN, which assigns a unique 10-character alphanumeric code to every 4m x 4m location block on the map.
“Swadeshi tech adoption has suffered due to active suppression by these foreign big-tech,” notes Verma, in a social media post. The point about Mappls being held back by monopolies, has played out in courtrooms worldwide, with big tech fined for anti-competitive behaviour. He draws parallels with the Chinese model, to give homegrown platforms a chance to develop. “In the case of tech, as with any thing, the more it is used the better the feedback loop to make it better. China got good at manufacturing and tech because the Chinese as a nation resolved to use their own swadeshi tech, giving them a chance to improve,” says Verma.
India’s consumer focused tech success stories include quick commerce and food delivery platforms. Case in point, the Zomato and Swiggy monopoly, which is proving difficult to match, let alone surpass, for other platforms. Amazon, for instance, is yet to dip its toes in the quick commerce space, despite the e-commerce footprint.
The next layer of competition comes from the likes of PhonePe which sees their Pincode quick commerce service finding traction. Another PhonePe success story is the Indus Appstore, which now finds itself installed on 100 million smartphones and counting, mounting a challenge to Google’s Play Store domination as the default app marketplace on millions of Android phones.
“It’s a proud moment for all of us to cross the 10-crore milestone, and it is an important step in our journey of building a horizontal app store for India. We will also continue to support the developer ecosystem by offering a level-playing field that allows them to distribute and reach the right users with features built for the Indian regional and cultural context,” says Priya M Narasimhan, Chief Business Officer, Indus Appstore.
Not all are success stories
Many apps have tried to replace WhatsApp as the default messaging app for millions of users, and none have succeeded. If ever there was a definition of unshakeable habits, this would be it. Signal and Telegram, in recent years, pitched data security and encryption, to wean users away from the Meta-owned messaging app. They found little success.
Further perspective comes from the failed attempts of Tencent, SoftBank, and Tiger Global Management funded Hike messaging app (this shut down in 2021), as well as the Koo social media app, which closed down in the summer of last year — this was funded by a mix of venture capital firms, including Tiger Global Management, Accel, and 3one4 Capital, as well as prominent investors including Naval Ravikant, Virat Kohli, Tiger Shroff, and Shraddha Kapoor.
“A cautionary tale is instructive. Earlier Indian apps such as Koo and Hike showed that early hype does not guarantee scale—network effects and user inertia proved insurmountable,” CMR’s Ram points out.
According to the latest numbers by online research firm Business of Apps, WhatsApp has currently cornered 59.04% of India’s messaging app market share, with Snapchat (19.72%) and Telegram (9.17%) following. It is this domination that Zoho’s Arattai messaging app wants to break. There’s a positive movement following the government push. According to market intelligence and data from Sensor Tower, Arattai downloads in India grew from under 10,000 in August 2025 to about 400,000 in September.
Arattai, in Tamil, means casual talk or chit-chat. As things unfold with another challenge for WhatsApp’s domination, two schools of thought emerge.
“What has changed now is the convergence of stronger enterprise anchors like Zoho’s SMB (small and medium business) network, a clear privacy-first and data-sovereign positioning, and regulatory tailwinds actively favouring domestic solutions. These factors collectively improve the odds versus past attempts, but the playbook still requires patience, resilience, and relentless iteration,” says Ram.
“I am unsure if Arratai can make a significant impact, but yes have seen some additional features like letting you schedule a call which give users a value added reason to have it other than the patriotic call,” Kawoosa points out.
For the platforms that still remain on course, the struggle to continue is as real as finding funding. ONDC (Open Network for Digital Commerce), for instance, which has participation from 357 seller, buyer and logistics platforms including Ola, Tata Neu, Delhivery, Flipkart, Magicpin and Mapmyindia, has in recent months not quite kept up with the supremacy of Zomato and Swiggy.
This example may well be a hint that government endorsements can only do so much towards creating awareness and providing adoption momentum. It’ll be imperative for tech platforms to develop, iterate and for that, deep pockets and unique features may be key.
Vembu knows that playbook better than most. “We can say with confidence that we will continue to invest in R&D and we will continue to scale the infrastructure. Perfecting the tech is important for us and for the nation, and we will stay the course,” he says, with hope that Arattai can go much further than just the initial excitement.
A question that is worth asking is, why did an India of the 90s building the information technology (IT) backbone that includes Infosys, Wipro and TCS, begin adopting tech from other countries? More than an actual answer, course correction may be long overdue.