- Zoho became India’s first billion-dollar company as revenues soared beyond 1 billion USD.
- The company was started in 1966 and is renowned for its Official suite which boasts more than 50 applications.
- CEO of Zoho Corporation, Sridhar Vembu talked about the humble beginnings of Zoho and his pride in the achievement.Â
Amidst the slow economic growth and the weakening status of the Indian rupee, a glimmer of good hope appears for the Indian market as Zoho Corporation, an Indian multinational technology company became the first billion-dollar company in India.
What does Zoho Corp do?
Zoho is essentially a tech company that makes web-based business tools. It is most popular for the online office suite offering Zoho Office Suite.
The company was founded in 1996 by Sridhar Vembu and Tony Thomas and has a presence in seven locations with global headquarters in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India, and corporate headquarters outside of Austin in Del Valle, Texas.
From 1996 to 2009, the company was known as AdventNet, Inc. and also provided network management software. The Zoho CRM was released in 2005, along with Zoho Writer, which was the company’s first Office suite product.
Many other successful products were released under the umbrella of the office suite including Zoho Projects, Creator, Sheet, and Show which were released in 2006. Zoho expanded into the collaboration space with the release of Zoho Docs and Zoho Meeting in 2007.
In 2017, Zoho launched Zoho One, a comprehensive suite of over forty applications. As of October 2021, Zoho One has been expanded to 50 applications. Zoho reached more than 50 million customers in January 2020. In July 2022, the company announced it had more than 80 million users.
A billion-dollar feat:Â
Now the company has indeed achieved soaring heights as it becomes India’s first billion-dollar company. Zoho- India’s first billion-dollar product company Zoho created history as it touched $1 billion in annual revenue.
Despite the economic slowdown in the Indian market, this Chennai-based technology company reached this huge mark of annual revenue fuelled by its extremely diverse product portfolio.
The CEO of Zoho Corporation, Sridhar Vembu talked about the humble beginnings of Zoho. They started out with one product which had earned a very modest profit initially.
Talking about these beginnings he also added that none of the employees back then would have even thought that their company could cross this dream figure of a billion dollars in annual revenue and in doing so become the first-ever Indian product company to cross this landmark.
Small setback before Huge Success:
Back in 2020 and 2021, the growth of the company had taken a setback owing to the Covid pandemic. Like most companies, Zoho was facing a downward curve as well.
Although the diversified portfolio of the company did save money for the customers as a result of which Zoho never lost its name and trust among the people using it. That was a major lifesaver during times of crisis.
The CEO also claimed that despite the achievements and numbers, Zoho will aim to serve the customers the best product at very affordable prices – this remains their aim and motto.
The secret behind Success :
In today’s world of show and glamour marketing and pitching the product well to the customers are the primary aim of almost all product-based companies. In this market of cutthroat competition, one can understand the extreme importance of the Sales and Marketing team and strategies.
But Zoho thought differently and that’s why they could break away from the competition. Zoho spends almost three times its marketing spend on Research and Development and strongly believes that the quality of its product will push them to the top.
In the last three years, Zoho has received 25 patents. This talks volumes about how strong the R&D department of the company is and its capability across different categories and markets.
Such a strong R&D helped Zoho build a diversified business portfolio and increase its appeal to different businesses with its unified offerings which always have an upper hand over single products.
