Sarahah will soon be available in Indian languages: Founder Zain-Alabdin Tawfiq

One of the most viral apps of 2017, Sarahah now has more than 240 million registered accounts and over 1.3 billion messages were exchanged in less than a year.

Remember Sarahah? (Sarahah)

Remember Sarahah, the viral application that broke the Internet a few months ago?

The Saudi Arabia-based anonymous messaging platform has more than 240 million registered accounts.

Zain-Alabdin Tawfiq, founder of Sarahah, told Hindustan Times that the platform plans to add new features, including support for Indian languages. He said, "We have a lot of surprises, wait for them in the few coming weeks."

"Sarahah will be introduced in many other languages including those used in India and we are deeply observing trends and patterns of our users there to enhance the experience of Sarahah's Indian users. We are also continuing to introduce new features and services to better serve our users around the world." Tawfiq said.

While Sarahah started off as a social media platform, it's also eyeing workplaces for its future growth. And the company believes India will play a major role in this regard.

I have always been fascinated with India, its great heritage and the ingenuity of its people. Their contribution to the IT world has always been vital in its growth and success -Zain-Alabdin Tawfiq.

"We will be also expanding by capitalising on Sarahah's huge potential in enabling both individual users and organisations to source genuine constructive feedback from a wide variety of social, cultural, professional and economic circles. Its uses in the commercial and services sectors are endless and it can greatly help the corporate world in its talent management endeavours. India well be a key expansion zone in these fields," he added.

He also pointed out that Sarahah was being used by international companies such as HoustonPress and Netflix.

On misuse of Sarahah

The platform, however, also raised several eyebrows, fearing the application could cause an increase in trolling and cyber bullying. Cashing in on Sarahah's popularity, various malicious ware-injecting applications such as sarahah exposed flooded the internet to target users.

Of late, we have seen YouTube expanding its moderator's team to tackle the growing problem of disturbing and offensive content on its platform. Singapore-based Bigo Live, a popular live video blogging application, is also stepping up efforts to address the problem of explicit content.

Zain-Alabdin asserted that this was a common problem that all the popular social networking platforms share.

On the issue of fake Sarahah apps, he said, "We welcome legitimate competition. It keeps us improving to stay ahead, which means better service to our users. However, we are very concerned with the fact that those who try to create fake sites usually intend to compromise user privacy. We fully realise that Sarahah's success in attracting millions of users around the globe exchanging over 1.3 billion messages in less than a year, is built in great part on their trust in our unwavering commitment to protect their privacy and the anonymity of their responses."

"We also ask our users to remain very vigilant and always ensure that they are using our application and keeping us informed of any fake attempt they observe."

"We have taken several measures to address this challenge and we will continue to enhance them, but we would rather not to discuss these measures because we don't want to make the misuser's job any easier."