Zoho built capabilities steadily to reach $1 billion in revenue: CEO

Amid the economic slowdown, Chennai-based global technology company Zoho Corporation on Tuesday announced it has reached $1 billion in annual revenue, riding on its diversified product portfolio.

Sridhar Vembu, CEO and Co-founder, Zoho, told IANS that no one has built a billion-dollar product company in India.

"We built one product, a modest product and we got some modest profit. We invested in building more capabilities steadily. Even our own people would not have believed years ago that we could build all this. That is the journey of building steadily," said a humbled Vembu.

"If you ask any of our senior managers who have been with us throughout our journey, they will not believe that we will be a billion dollar company. Because nobody has built a billion dollar product company in India. They didn't even know it was possible. So we had to go about it slowly and steadily," Vembu told IANS.

While growth slowed down for the company quite a bit in 2022 over 2021, its diversified product portfolio and the fact that it saved money for customers helped us so far.

"We hope to continue to serve our customers by bringing the highest quality offerings at very affordable prices," said the Zoho CEO.

The company also announced on Tuesday that it plans to open 100 network PoPs (point of presence) around the world in the next five years for providing users with faster networks, and also double investment for technologies such as blockchain and AI (artificial intelligence).

Zoho, which spends three times its marketing spend on R&D and has received 25 patents in the last three years, attributes its growth to strong R&D capabilities across categories and markets, its diversified portfolio and to businesses choosing unified offerings over single products.

The company's India revenue increased by 77 per cent on an annual basis in 2021.

Its integrated platform Zoho One now supports 50,000 organisations across more than 160 countries and in India, Zoho One has seen 64 per cent growth in the last two years.

"Our R&D focus in the coming years is to further unify our technology stack so that we are able to elevate the user experience," said Vembu.

More than 80 million users around the world rely on Zoho to run their businesses.

--IANS

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