Move over, Chrome and WhatsApp — India has new contenders in town. Tech giant Zoho Corporation has rolled out Ulaa, a privacy-first web browser, and Arattai, a secure messaging app, both designed to give Indian users complete control over their data and digital footprint. While Ulaa comes packed with advanced tracking protection, multiple user modes, and Chromium-based compatibility for seamless browsing, Arattai offers smooth texting, voice and video calls, and media sharing — all backed by robust privacy measures and data storage within India. With these launches, Zoho isn’t just expanding its product line; it’s championing a larger vision of digital self-reliance and homegrown innovation for a new, privacy-conscious India. In a conversation with CE, Manikandan Vembu, CEO of Zoho Corporation talks about why India needs to own its digital tools, from browsers to messaging platforms, and how Ulaa and Arattai lead the way.
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What inspired the creation of Ulaa, and how does it differentiate itself from established browsers like Chrome, Firefox, and Brave?
The whole idea of creating a browser came from the fact that we were already having around twelve business apps. If you look at Zoho, we have apps for email and other business functions, so we have been working on supporting end-to-end business applications. Since we are a cloud-native and mobile-native business app vendor, the browser is where these apps are consumed. That means the browser becomes an important canvas for these apps. So we thought the natural extension could be building our own browser, so that some of our customers could actually benefit from using it — because we could invest more in privacy, ad blockers, and address the limitations we find in the current browsers. We wanted to focus mainly on businesses and organisations where privacy and security are of the highest priority. So we wanted to bring that additional layer into the browser, but it’s never been designed as a general-purpose browser. Like how you have a search within the organisation versus a Google search — one is consumer, th e other is business — similarly, there is a consumer element, and we want to focus on the business element. Ulaa was started with the intent of packaging it together with our apps, giving customers the choice to use a privacy-enabled browser if they want to.
Privacy is a key selling point of Ulaa. Can you walk us through the browser’s privacy architecture and how user data is handled?
Basically, the ad blockers are at multiple levels. We make sure that ads are blocked, and we also have modes — a personal mode and a work mode. So even if some attack happens on the personal mode, we make sure that your work mode is not affected. The access is completely separated there. That way, even if something happens in one mode, it doesn’t compromise everything else you have logged into in your browser. That’s where we bring in the privacy angle. The ad blockers at every level ensure that the user experience remains high.
Ulaa supports multiple user modes. How do these modes enhance user experience and productivity, particularly for students and professionals?
For a professional, there are things they browse for personally — shopping, travel searches, etc. Then there’s work mode, where you log into your business apps on the cloud. You can have your business email account opened in the professional work mode, whereas your personal Gmail is opened in the personal mode. This helps you separate these modes and gives you a clear context of what you’re working on. You don’t have to mix everything up. In current browsers, most of it is mixed — you might have Gmail, WhatsApp, and work chat all logged in together. That increases the possibility of mistakenly posting something in the wrong place. Once you have a clear work mode separation, that never happens. It also helps with privacy — if something happens in the personal mode, it won’t impact the work mode. So that remains secure. That’s how we’re differentiating, and that’s what we’ve implemented.
Given its Chromium-based compatibility, how does Ulaa plan to avoid inheriting the same tracking vulnerabilities found in other Chromium browsers?
That’s where our blockers come in. Even if there is tracking, those things get blocked by the browser. We ensure that we invest heavily in this area — that is the core strength of Ulaa, and that’s where we are investing as well.
What role does localisation — languages, content, and cultural alignment play in Ulaa’s user experience for Indian audiences?
We support multiple Indian languages — more than ten — and we continue to increase the number of languages we support in India. That’s a major area of focus, where it has to be very regional and local for every state and every language. That’s where we are focusing.
Can you share how Ulaa is optimised for India’s varied digital infrastructure — from metros to rural areas with limited bandwidth?
In terms of bandwidth consumption or performance, Ulaa is similar to what other browsers offer. We haven’t done anything specific to optimise for regional locations, so in that sense, it’s going to be similar in terms of what everything else supports in the market.
With WhatsApp’s deep market penetration, what is Arattai’s unique value proposition that can drive user migration or adoption?
The first thing is that all the data resides within the country. That’s the first differentiator. Privacy is the other. We also enable meetings and calls within the chat app. We are already seeing that meeting and call volumes are increasing. We’re combining personal meetings and chat together to provide more value to consumers. As we keep enhancing the functionality, we’re planning to add much more to the platform and make it more sticky for users. So, in terms of differentiation — meetings are one, privacy is another, and we’re not going to have any ads running on the platform.
What features are being developed to support enterprise or government usage of Arattai?
We plan to open up the platform to integrate with businesses. That’s something in the plan. Once we do that, more businesses can be onboarded into the platform so that consumers can connect with businesses, get support, and resolve queries through Arattai.
Is there a roadmap for integrating Arattai with other Zoho tools to make it a part of a broader productivity ecosystem?
For businesses, we already have Cliq, which is our messaging platform. It uses the same backend technology as Arattai, but for business, we give it as Cliq because it comes with its own features. It integrates with every other business application — not just Zoho’s but also third-party apps. Arattai, however, needs to integrate with very different services — consumer services. For example, if Drive files are important, we could do some integration there. But largely, these two — Cliq and Arattai — might remain separate.
How does Arattai plan to address misinformation, content moderation, and abuse while staying committed to privacy?
We do have plans, but it’s too early to talk about them. We’re working on some ideas, and once those are ready, we can give our users a clear way to avoid misinformation. It’s something we are actively working on.
What challenges did Zoho face when building these products entirely in India, and how did the team overcome them?
We started developing products in India in 1996. At that time, the ecosystem wasn’t there. Product business is very different from IT services — in IT services, the requirements come from the customer, but in products, you have to identify the market and invest in building. If the product doesn’t find traction or product-market fit, there’s a risk of not generating any revenue for the effort you’ve put in. But we were lucky enough to identify a few markets in the early days where we could find traction, and then we started investing in building more products. Our goal at Zoho has always been to solve end-to-end business problems — CRM for sales, email, accounting, inventory management, and so on. We also have the ManageEngine division for IT management — data centre management, IT resource management, etc. We believe in learning by doing. We built a culture where people could try, and failures are not punished. Instead, we learn from mistakes and improve in the next iteration. The main challenge was the lack of ecosystem. Today, we have a strong SaaS ecosystem, especially in Chennai, but back in 1996, it took time to build that ecosystem.
Are you seeing signs that India is ready to embrace homegrown alternatives, even if they go against global incumbents?
It’s not just about choice anymore — there’s a necessity. We need technology across every industry, and we need homegrown technologies. Being a large country like India, we have to be self-sufficient in technology. We cannot rely on other countries for our tech needs. Not all problems are the same — take UPI, for example. It solved India’s payment problem in a way that was uniquely ours. It worked even in rural corners of India because it used mobile as a medium. Similarly, we have to look at our own unique problems and find homegrown companies that understand them and solve them for India’s needs. We have a huge population, so we can’t rely on outside solutions for everything — we have to invest in solving these within the country.
How do Ulaa and Arattai align with India’s ‘Digital Sovereignty’ ambitions?
In the case of Arattai, the data resides within the country, and the technology is homegrown. That means no policy can stop access to these apps because they comply with Indian regulations and laws. Since they’re homegrown, they must follow the regulations of whichever country we host our software in. And it’s not just Ulaa or Arattai — the entire Zoho ecosystem can serve India’s data sovereignty goals because everything resides fully in India.