Zoho founder Sridhar Vembu on Arattai app dropping out of top 100 list: ‘I literally told our employees…’

Zoho Corporation founder and CEO Sridhar Vembu has responded to his company's messaging app Arattai falling out of the top 100 apps list, calling it a normal part of business development and dismissing critics as wasting their time. In an interview with ANI, Vembu addressed questions about WhatsApp testing a feature that would allow users to message people on other platforms.“There's nothing going wrong. I think, first of all, the idea that something went wrong is what is wrong. It is a normal course of events. Nothing goes straight to the moon. You have to go through these ups and downs,” Vembu was quoted as saying.He emphasised that companies that survive maintain a long-term perspective. “The trick to companies that survive is they have a long-term view on this. In fact, I never thought The number one is anything big. In fact, I literally told our employees, this is a particular moment, it won't last,” he added.“That's why I simply don't pay attention. And the people who pay attention and making fun of this, they are wasting their time. That's all I'll say. We are not wasting time. I am sitting and we are sitting and focused on code. So I said, don't worry about it,” Vembu noted, pointing out that Zoho views Arattai as a five to 15-year project rather than a short-term venture.Vembu revealed that Zoho has worked on messaging technology for 10 years, making the recent ranking drop insignificant. “Our strategy in all this, the messaging is very core. And we have been working on it for 10 years. So this one month is nothing for us. We will continue this and we have a really strong app. It's getting stronger,” the cofounder was quoted as saying.The company plans frequent updates to improve Arattai. Vembu argued that credible competition is necessary to prevent monopolistic practices in the messaging app market. “If we don't have competition, you can't keep the monopolist honest. The only thing that keeps a monopolist honest is competition,” he said.While talking about end-to-end encryption of chats on Arattai, Vembu noted that the encryption feature has been implemented, however, it will take some more time for the updates to take effect.