Rethinking how we measure progress in our careers

↓

The messaging app Arattai, developed by Zoho, is making the news recently for all the right reasons. The messaging app went from 3000 downloads per day to almost 350,000 per day over the last few weeks.

The growth was so rapid that the app reached the top position in Apple’s App Store charts for the “Social Networking” category in India

What caught my attention was not what caused the surge in traffic but how this app has survived for so long.

While Arattai might be riding on the tailwinds of surging nationalism and endorsement from the government, it is not a new app.

In fact, it was soft-launched in early 2021 and going by the numbers, my estimate is that it would have had less than 1 lakh users before September. In contrast, Whatsapp has around 500 Million (5 Crore) active users in India.

This metric is enough to kill such a project a long time ago.

Why waste resource and infrastructure on a project that has a established player in the market which will be hard to dislodge?

The answer lies in how the founder’s define Zoho as a company. Zoho hasn’t gone public after 29 years in business and making more than billion dollars in revenue annually.

In response to comments that Zoho should go public, the founder Sridhar Vembu says the reason for this is that “Zoho is a kind of an industrial research lab that also makes money to fund itself. We essentially ignore short term profits, as long as we don’t lose money. And we have a culture of founders and senior executives living frugally”

​

Sridhar Vembu @svembu We understand the push for Zoho to go public. But let me state the reality: Arattai would very likely not have been built by a public company that faces quarter to quarter financial pressure. It was a "hopelessly foolish" project, and even our employees had expressed scepticism https://twitter.com/venkat_fin9/status/1972271628320116788 Venkatesh Alla @venkat_fin9 High time @Zoho gets listed in Indian stock markets. @svembu, India deserves a fair shot at investing in a true homegrown tech company. 11:31 PM • Sep 28, 2025 4272 Retweets 26920 Likes Read 1158 replies

​

When Arattai was developed, his employees called it a “hopelessly foolish” project. But they did it anyway.

A public company that focuses on growth, quarterly targets, share prices would have nipped it in the bud. Imagine announcing during your shareholders meeting that you are investing resources to create a messaging app similar to Whatsapp.

The freedom that Zoho gets by remaining private could not be appreciated if one looks at just the bottomline growth every year.

And I think every individual needs to look at their professional life in the same way.

But if we take a page out of Zoho’s book, there’s another way to play the game.

You can choose to treat your career like a private company.

A private company has the freedom to experiment, to invest in projects that might look foolish to others, and to pursue long-term bets without obsessing over quarterly results.

Similarly, you can:

• Explore skills or interests that might not “pay off” immediately.
• Work on side projects that align with your values, even if they don’t look impressive on LinkedIn.
• Say no to roles or opportunities that grow your bank account but shrink your sense of identity.

If a company, that employs more than 28,000, can resist the temptation to play the Wall Street game and still succeed; I don’t think we should treat our own career like a stock that needs to be constantly traded for short-term gains.

​

If you think this newsletter will be useful to someone else, feel free to forward it.

And If you were forwarded this newsletter, you can read all previous issues and also subscribe to the newsletter here. Make sure to click the confirmation email once you subscribe

I hope you enjoyed this week's version. See you next week.

​

Best wishes,

Nimalan.