WhatApp's latest desi rival coming: 10 top features

After SIM cards, Patanjali launched its Kimbho text and video chat app to compete with WhatsApp. The Kimbho platform supports videos, photos, doodle, stickers and GIFs among others. It can be seen as a complete WhatsApp competitor with location support as well. The app first launched in May this year, however, it was taken down just a day later from Google Play Store and Apple App Store due to security and privacy concerns.

On the occasion of Independence Day, Yoga Guru Ramdev announced that the app will be back on August 27. Here are 12 things you need to know about the Kimbho app.

The Kimbho chat is Baba Ramdev’s “Swadeshi” answer to WhatsApp. Patanjali spokesperson SK Tijarawala tweeted, "Now India will talk . After launching SIM cards, Baba Ramdev has launched a new messaging application called Kimbho. Now WhatsApp will be given competition.”

Explaining the name “Kimbho”, Patanjali spokesperson SK Tijarawala tweeted in Hindi, “Kimbho in Sanskrit means what’s going on and what’s the news.”

Kimbho supports videos, photos, doodle, stickers, GIF among others. The app claims to offer all the multimedia support features that WhatsApp is offering.

The Kimbho app by Patanjali also supports video chatting. You can even create groups to chat but there is little information on group video calls.

The Kimbho app by Patanjali can be seen as a complete WhatsApp competitor with location support as well. You can share your location with your friends on the chat app.

The Kimbho chat app is claimed to be AES end-to-end encrypted like WhatsApp. This means, ideally, only the sender and the receiver of the message can see the content. If the message is intercepted by someone else in between then it will appear encrypted.

Kimbho is also claimed to support ghost chats and auto-deletion of messages. While the company did not explain the feature much, we can expect messages with an expiry time and period.

In May when the app was launched a security researcher claimed it to be a “security disaster”. He even said that anyone with technical knowledge can intercept and read messages easily. The researcher has also added that the Kimbho team has merely “copied” another app called “Bolo”.

Like WhatsApp, the Kimbho app needs access to almost all device permissions like mic, phone, contacts, device ID, photos, multimedia, camera and others.

Kimbho chat was launched on Google Play (Android) and App Store (Apple) on May 30. But within 24 hours of the launch, the app was taken down because of some technical glitches. The app is not available as of now and will be relaunched later this year.