India would be among top 2 contributors to Zoho in 5 years: Sridhar Vembu

Our customer base is mostly from the private sector; with the data centres, we will expand our exposure to the public sector' says CEO of Zoho, Sridhar Vembu

Zoho Corporation, offering Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) products for businesses, has been growing in the US and European markets for years. In 2017, the company launched Zoho One — an integrated suit where its products are offered to customers at a single price — that attracted eyeballs in India. Zoho Chief Executive Officer Sridhar Vembu speaks to Gireesh Babu about the company’s plans in India. Edited excerpts:

Your integrated product offering Zoho One has completed one year. How has it been growing?

In the first year, we have more than 12,000 businesses using the integrated platform. Around 36 per cent of the paid users are in India, which is very significant, considering India accounts for a smaller percentage of revenue for most companies.  More than 60 per cent of the paid users from India for Zoho One are new to Zoho. In addition, we are gaining a lot of customers in individual products. The overall contribution of Indian business would be around 10 per cent of our revenue, but it is rapidly growing. Our India revenue is growing more than 100 per cent annually. India is already one of the top four contributors to Zoho and we think it will be among the top two in five years.

How will you achieve that?

We are adding Indian language support to address the requirements of local customers in the country. We are helping them map out how to implement Zoho products. We are investing in search product, Zia Search, which we call actionable search, in addition to artificial intelligence, machine learning and other technologies. Maybe next year, the company will offer a cyber security product to customers. We are also starting data centres in Mumbai and Chennai. This is particularly relevant for the public sector and regulated industries. Our customer base is mostly from the private sector. With the data centres, we will expand our exposure to the public sector.

What percentage of your business could be from India in the next few years?

We are targeting around 15 per cent of our business to come from India in the next three to four years and it may grow to 25 per cent in the next five to six years. The US, the European Union, and the UK are growing well, but the growth rate is the highest in India because of the sheer amount of adoption happening here. Currently, around 45 per cent of our business is from the US, around 35 per cent from Europe and the rest from others. In 10 years, India will be neck and neck with the US and both will be around 30 per cent of our business. Overall, we want to continue growing at a 35-40 per cent run rate for the next three to four years.

Plans to expand headcount?

We might be about 10,000 employees in the next couple of years and a majority of them would be in India.