Earlier this week on the India Today website, you might have seen a piece titled Why Desi Apps Fail in the context of Arattai, the viral sensation from Zoho. In that piece, I highlighted three big reasons. One of them touched the nerves of (some) readers. This was the privacy angle. Since then, there has been a growing debate around privacy, or the perceived lack of it, in Arattai. On social media, there is plenty of chatter, with passionate exchanges, ad hominem attacks, and straw-man arguments. Zoho leadership, including its co-founder Sridhar Vembu and its CEO Mani Vembu, has spoken about it.

But inevitably, as it happens with privacy debates in India, the big chunk of the conversation is pure unadulterated whataboutery. What about all the data that you give to Google, Facebook, and

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