Arattai Switches On End-to-End Encryption, But Not Every Chat Is Covered Yet

Zoho’s messaging platform Arattai is rolling out end-to-end encryption (E2EE) for one-to-one chats, and the feature will officially switch on tonight (IST). The update was confirmed by Zoho founder Sridhar Vembu, who also asked users to update the app first so encrypted chats can work across both sides of a conversation.

The move marks one of the biggest security-focused changes for Arattai so far, and the company is treating this launch as a phased transition rather than a switch happening in the background without notice.

Personal Chats First, Groups and Backups Later

For now, encryption applies only to individual chats. Group chats will follow after a few weeks, and secure cloud backups will arrive roughly two weeks after that. The company says the change required a complete internal architecture redesign, which is why certain features are still in line for rollout.

How The Encryption Rollout Will Work

The new update needs to be installed by both users in a chat for encryption to work. When that happens, the app will automatically start a fresh encrypted chat thread, while older messages will move to an archived window that no longer continues as the active session.

Users who haven’t updated yet will still be able to use the older chat window, but only for three days. After that, Arattai will force-update all users to the latest version and make encrypted chats mandatory across the app.

Why This Matters

With this move, Arattai is joining a small group of messaging platforms that treat encryption as a core function rather than a toggle. End-to-end encryption ensures that messages are readable only between the sender and the receiver, meaning Arattai itself won’t have access to chat content once the feature is active.