New Delhi, July 11 -- Srijan Shetty opens WhatsApp to the Unread chat filter tab. It's his default view, a digital gateway that takes him straight to conversations demanding attention. For the Dubai-based fintech entrepreneur, it's not just a feature-it's a lifestyle that's defined his relationship with technology for 15 years, ever since he first got email in college at IIT Kanpur.

"I even mark OTP messages as read in the messages app," Shetty says, and when I ask who doesn't, he shrugs. "I know people who don't care about piling messages as long as they got the OTP and used it." It's something I'll never understand either.

We are the "inbox zero" people-a minority that has begun to feel seen and heard by platforms. WhatsApp started be...