ZKTOR’s developer reports a million users in four markets as it pairs shared engineering with separate servers, local grievance handling and restrictions on advertising data.
NEW DELHI: Softa Technologies said its social platform ZKTOR had passed one million users during ten months of mass public beta in India, Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, outlining a regional expansion that would keep national data systems separate even as the Indian-built service adds messaging, search and commercial functions.
Founder Sunil Kumar Singh presented the approach at the Press Club of India on September 18, 2026. The company says each national operation has its own servers, encryption boundaries, keys and access controls, with backups and disaster recovery retained in-country. It is seeking to reuse engineering across markets without bringing their user records into a common regional dataset. Public beta continues separately in Bhutan and the Maldives.
The expansion combines a regional audience strategy with country-level operating responsibilities. People would be able to communicate across borders and follow communities abroad, while protected information and complaints remain subject to the relevant national arrangements. Singh described that combination as part of his ambition for India’s technological soft power, not as a government programme. An Indian development base, he said, would not displace responsibility to users in neighbouring countries.
The financing and revenue arrangements are part of the same proposition. Singh, an Indian-origin Finnish citizen, said development had taken no government grants, Finnish or European Union funding, external venture capital (VC) or business-house backing. Softa is looking to contextual advertising and professional services to support an operation that includes national infrastructure and human complaint handling. Its briefing materials did not disclose revenue or profitability.
The audience total and technical descriptions are company-reported and have not been independently verified for this account. The million-user figure covers the four named beta markets, not daily active use, all countries under testing or a combined audience for related products. The briefing also introduced SNDESH messaging and KHOZU search; standalone development of SNDESH continues. Their introduction does not establish separate user totals or completion of every planned function.
A regional service with national responsibilities
Softa’s account of country-based data sovereignty extends beyond choosing where to place a main server. It includes the arrangements used to restore a service after disruption: backups and disaster recovery are intended to stay within the same national boundary as ordinary operations. Common software may support several deployments, the company says, but neither routine processing nor restoration is meant to combine their records. That makes recovery design part of the regional operating structure rather than a separate technical exception.
Cross-border communication is not presented as a reason to remove those distinctions. Softa says its country-specific arrangements seek to address data-protection requirements, including India’s Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) framework and the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). These are statements about its intended compliance approach, not evidence of regulatory certification. The materials do not establish that citing either framework settles every issue arising from communication between different jurisdictions, or that the platform has received official approval for the architecture.
The company also distinguishes the location of information from authority to inspect it. Audience permissions govern delivery of protected material; encryption restricts access to private exchanges; task-specific controls govern the records available to a service or commercial provider. Domestic storage is therefore one element of the proposal, not a claim that everyone operating within that country may read the data. Softa says those restrictions continue to apply to its own operator access as well as to outside recipients.
Grievance handling follows the national organisation. Country-based grievance officers work with a Women and Children Wing on specialist cases, with local-language review, restricted access to evidence, reasons for decisions, notifications, escalation and appeals. A person reporting harm and a user contesting a restriction have different interests, but both are covered by the described process. Commercial staff serving the same national market do not, the company says, acquire general access to case files through that shared location.
Singh links the use of common engineering to resource discipline. Softa’s organisational structure connects Indian development, Finnish headquarters and a Chicago research gateway, while user information remains subject to the national deployments. Those locations describe how research and engineering are organised, not a transfer map for every user record. The proposed economy is reuse of software; the company has not supplied comparative operating-cost figures demonstrating the savings or performance of each national system.
Women’s participation shapes the access model
Softa’s women-first model places online dignity at the centre of its regional offer. Its stated objective is to allow public work, income-generating activity and private life to coexist without giving each the same audience. Public, friends-only and private choices govern who may see a contribution, while comment and resharing controls govern interaction around it. A woman publishing professional work would not, under that arrangement, have to make family photographs or private exchanges equally accessible to potential customers.
The company’s No URL Media Architecture concerns delivery of protected photographs and videos. Rather than relying on a reusable public file link, it says delivery depends on the audience permissions attached to the material. The intended target is link-based extraction that can support scraping, impersonation and deepfake abuse. The description does not mean that the platform has no web addresses, that public contributions are confidential, or that every form of copying has been removed.
Softa acknowledges that screenshots, recordings and photographs of a screen taken with another device remain possible. An authorised recipient may therefore create a copy outside the protected delivery route. Changing a sharing setting governs later access through the service; it cannot universally recover copies already made elsewhere. That limitation leaves work for detection and grievance handling even after a contribution has been delivered to an audience chosen by its owner.
The child-safety provisions include children appearing in adults’ posts who do not have accounts themselves. Softa distinguishes the uploader from the person depicted, bringing non-user children within its stated specialist responsibilities. An adult’s membership and decision to publish are not treated as an exhaustive account of the interests of everyone in an image. The materials describe a route for reviewing reported harm, rather than a guarantee that audience controls resolve every question about a child’s exposure.
Public visibility, private contact and rights over creative work remain separate matters. Publishing a professional page can make work discoverable; messaging and calls carry selected exchanges; programme terms govern eligible earnings. Neither access to a contribution nor payment for its distribution supplies a general entitlement to copy, republish or commercially reuse it. Softa says a creator’s business relationship also does not widen an advertiser’s access to family material, private conversations or evidence submitted in a complaint.
Automated flags, human decisions
The VDL protective AI system flags risks involving sexual content, impersonation and child safety, according to Softa. The company assigns decisions to the human review structure rather than treating an automated classification as the final determination of a case. Restricted case access, explanations, notification and routes to appeal are intended to accompany the detection system. The briefing materials do not provide comparative detection-accuracy or complaint-response figures, so the account establishes the process described, not its measured performance against other services.
That distinction matters to both sides of a disputed decision. Someone seeking protection needs the reported conduct examined; someone challenging a restriction needs the platform’s own action examined. The review structure described by Softa covers both, without making the filing of a report equivalent to proof against the account concerned. Reasons and escalation are part of the promised service, not simply an acknowledgement that the complaint was received.
Evidence can itself be sensitive. A person reporting an image or exchange may need to submit precisely the material they do not want circulated further. Softa says access is confined to the information relevant to handling the case and that safety processing stays outside advertising. Reporting harm is not described as permission for a campaign agency, merchant-support provider or unrelated employee to inspect the complainant’s wider private activity.
Local-language handling is intended to make that process usable in the communities the platform reaches. Reporting, understanding a decision and challenging it require different forms of assistance. HOLA AI supplies multilingual help for particular tasks, while VDL flags risks and specialist reviewers handle decisions. The company assigns those functions different roles; it does not describe an assistant’s answer as a replacement for a reasoned decision or an appeal.
The same separation applies where a complainant or the subject of a complaint also buys advertising or earns through the platform. Softa says campaign management does not confer authority over grievance outcomes. Agencies prepare offers, translate material and assist merchants; reviewers handle protected evidence. Its account makes those responsibilities distinct even when the parties use several commercial services, and keeps information obtained for safety work outside the material used to select advertising audiences.
Private communication and operational records
Softa describes Privacy and Data Safety by Design as restrictions on collection and access built into the service, rather than protection left entirely to settings discovered after joining. Private communication uses multiple layers of encryption, device-to-device protection and rotating keys. Its Zero Knowledge Server Architecture is intended to restrict operator access to private content. The company does not extend that description to a claim that every public post is secret or that no operational records exist.
One-time passwords (OTPs) authenticate account access. Necessary operational records, Softa says, remain separate from protected content. Authentication establishes access to an account; encryption concerns the protection of an exchange; audience permissions determine who may receive particular material. These measures address different points in the process. The company presents them together without claiming that any one of them resolves every risk associated with using a social service.
Physical access to a device remains a separate limit. A one-time password does not establish who can see an already-open account, and encryption does not conceal a message from someone looking at the recipient’s screen. The briefing materials recognise that distinction alongside the possibility of screenshots and recordings. The technical account concerns protected delivery and operator access, not a promise to eliminate every risk arising from a shared phone or an authorised viewer.
Softa also distinguishes zero behavioural tracking from the absence of all records needed to run a service. It says it does not construct behavioural histories to direct feeds or advertising. Its no-pushed-algorithm description concerns user-directed discovery without behavioural ranking, not the absence of software algorithms. Operational access is not, in the company’s account, an authorisation to assemble an enduring commercial history from a person’s otherwise separate activities.
SNDESH carries those commitments into the messaging service introduced at the briefing. Its stated three-layer design combines device-to-device end-to-end encryption, message-level keys and rotating server-side protection. Softa says private exchanges remain outside feed ranking and advertising as well as receiving technical protection. The platform-linked service is also being developed for standalone use, with that work distinguished from the audience already reported for ZKTOR.
Local discovery across borders
The day-to-day service is organised around hyperlocal-first Local Digital Worlds. Users choose districts, languages and communities, which supply the context for posts, local information and social connections. Softa says its natural feeds follow those choices rather than behavioural ranking. Locality is presented as a chosen interest, not as a requirement to monitor a person’s movements. That allows the same model to serve residents following nearby communities and diaspora users following a hometown from abroad.
The available formats combine posts and status updates, short clips, long-form video channels, pages and news. Clubs and buddy connections support continuing community interaction; messaging and individual or group voice and video calls carry direct exchanges. Softa links the range to different publishing and communication needs within selected audiences. A contribution need not seek national reach to have a role in a particular district or language community.
Singh attributed Gen Z adoption to privacy, control and local relevance. The briefing materials contain no age breakdown, so that remains his explanation of participation rather than a demographic finding established by the million-user total. The aggregate also does not establish how often people return or which formats they use most. Softa presents the platform as an option for particular activities, rather than requiring users to leave every established service.
Its rural Bharat emphasis connects discovery to practical work and help. Singh said rural needs had shaped the research behind community connections, language support and opportunities to earn. HOLA AI provides assistance for specific tasks; agencies support merchant campaigns; country-based specialists handle complaints. Those functions may use the same language without sharing unrestricted access to the same records. The company treats their purposes, not simply their language or common ownership, as the basis for access.
District-level plans include creative production, community operations and language support. They are proposed areas of work, not a disclosed hiring result or an established agency count. The materials also lack comparative device-performance and connectivity benchmarks. The range of activities described shows the operating ambition, but does not establish that video publishing, group calls and language assistance perform identically across every device, connection or national market.
Advertising without a combined private history
ZHAN is the advertising component of the business model. Softa says it matches offers through subject, language and locality rather than a profile assembled from the viewer’s private behaviour. The intended customers include merchants and small businesses seeking people within a relevant service area. The company describes the purchase as relevant distribution, not entitlement to the recipient’s unrelated messages, searches or purchases through other parts of the service range.
Agencies prepare campaigns, translate offers and support merchants. Access is meant to follow the work commissioned: preparing a promotion does not give its producer a general view of everyone who receives it. The same limit applies to different providers serving one business. Softa says a common client does not make every customer record available to each provider, and that commercial tasks remain distinct from handling safety evidence or reviewing a grievance.
Creator programme terms allocate 70% of applicable income attributable to their content. That is not automatically 70% of every advertising payment or of company revenue, nor a guaranteed earning for every participant. Campaign production, translation and merchant support are separate services whose payment arrangements are not fully explained by the creator percentage. The specified income base is therefore part of the offer, not a qualification that can be dropped when describing the share.
Contextual distribution remains paid advertising. The natural-feed commitment concerns the absence of behavioural ranking, not an absence of commercial reach. Softa’s materials distinguish campaign-delivery reporting from maintaining an enduring profile of a viewer, but do not set out a detailed measurement system. Its proposal is to account for the service delivered without using that task to compile the audience’s unrelated private history.
The company links commercial relevance to the same local choices that organise publishing. A creator can produce work useful to a selected community, while a merchant can seek a defined service area. EZOWM supports commerce and ZWATO business administration; HOLA AI supplies task-specific multilingual help. Softa says those functions may connect a commercial relationship without giving every service access to the complete sequence of discovery, conversation, purchase and administration.
New services, separate permissions
KHOZU, introduced alongside SNDESH, is described as evidence-first search and AI-assisted discovery. Its proposed information model combines sources readers can inspect, updated answers and visible corrections. Softa says it does not profile searchers or expose protected photographs, videos and messages. The search service is intended to make supporting public information available for scrutiny without treating private material elsewhere in the ecosystem as an open resource.
Those features address a different question from distribution through a local feed. A selected community gives material an audience; inspectable sources let a reader examine the basis of an answer. Updates and corrections allow that answer to change. Softa does not describe the arrangement as making AI-assisted search error-free, or as proof that every item appearing in local discovery has been independently established as accurate.
The distinction also runs between search, assistance and adjudication. KHOZU supports examination of information; HOLA AI assists with particular tasks; VDL identifies risks; specialist reviewers decide cases and appeals. Shared engineering does not, according to Softa, give those functions interchangeable permissions. A language tool used in a merchant campaign is not thereby entitled to see the evidence handled by the Women and Children Wing.
Across communication, search, commerce and administration, the company says private conversations, queries and purchases are excluded from combined advertising profiles. Private messages also stay outside feed ranking. Its integrated super-app model therefore has two boundaries: permissions attached to an activity and controls attached to a national deployment. Common software and a common developer are not presented as sufficient authority to pool the user’s records across either boundary.
The additions remain products at different stages rather than one completed launch. The reported million-user milestone belongs to ZKTOR‘s four-country mass public beta. SNDESH’s standalone development, KHOZU‘s introduction and the district-level work plans broaden the company’s programmed without supplying separate audience, employment or financial results. Softa has not provided a timetable for every activity described in the briefing material.
Financing the next phase
Singh traces the project to twelve years of India-focused research influenced by rural needs and European privacy culture. He has lived in Finland for more than two decades. That research account is distinct from the ten-month period used for the public-beta milestone: one concerns the work preceding the rollout, the other the participation reported during testing. He links the two through decisions about access, language and data use made before the expansion announcement.
His account of declining funding routes does not establish that a particular grant was awarded, that a specified sum was available to him, or that an approved application was rejected. Singh said avoiding government grants, Finnish and EU funding, external venture capital and business-house backing was intended to retain control over data use. It is a statement about financing choices, not independent evidence of security or a measured comparison with externally funded platforms.
He also cites ISRO-inspired frugal engineering as an influence on resource use, not as an institutional partnership. Softa’s concrete scaling method is to reuse software while retaining separate national datasets and purpose-specific permissions. The company intends contextual advertising and professional services to support the resulting operation. It has not disclosed figures showing how those revenues cover national infrastructure, recovery systems or specialist complaint handling. The next steps identified are continuing country-by-country testing, standalone development of SNDESH and further work on local services. Singh framed the project around the right to be online with privacy, data safety and dignity. In the operating model he described, regional reach would expand without enlarging commercial access to private conversations or complaint evidence. The same distinction applies to the financing proposition: growth is intended to come from more services and relevant distribution, not from converting a larger regional audience into one unrestricted store of personal records.
