SaaS major Zoho sees strong traction for its collaboration platform Cliq

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SaaS major Zoho Corp is seeing robust interest in its collaboration platform, Cliq, in India — its quickest growing market, which expanded by 37 per cent in 2022.

The company has enhanced its Cliq platform with the introduction of Cliq Rooms, an intelligent conference room solution, and announced fresh updates to Zoho Cliq to further strengthen its upmarket momentum. These declarations were made during Zoholics India, the company's annual user conference in Bengaluru.

"Zoho Cliq is the world's most sophisticated collaborative platform. Zoho provides the operating system for business, and we label Cliq as the operating system for Zoho. The comprehensive functionality of the Zoho suite is increasingly accessible via Cliq, with its intuitive messaging interface. This facilitates employees in extensive organisations, like Zoho Corp itself, to communicate and collaborate, supply data in real-time to apps, and interpret reports from the top-tier interface across both desktop and mobile platforms," stated Sridhar Vembu, CEO and co-founder of Zoho Corp.

"With this introduction, Zoho Cliq delivers a resilient platform that can empower employees to execute most of their duties directly within the app, be it resolving a client problem or authorising expenses. This can assist organisations, particularly those in the medium to large segment, in enhancing both the employee and customer experience by integrating key functions from front-end and back-end applications into the Cliq interface," Vembu continued.

According to Zoho, Cliq is one of the most frequently utilised applications in Zoho One, and there's been a 30 per cent surge in user migration from Slack and MS Teams in 2022. Reports suggest that the revenue for the Indian collaboration software market might reach $275.50 million by 2028. This solution was entirely developed in India and is part of Zoho’s research and development endeavours in crafting a cohesive technology stack.

With the recent updates, Zoho Cliq offers low-code adaptability, enabling developers to design and operate custom apps within Cliq. Distinct from its competitors, Cliq boasts its custom database, allowing developers to run their applications in a serverless manner.

Utilising Zia, Zoho’s AI assistant, users can obtain meeting summaries, initiate action items as tasks in Zoho Projects, and set subsequent reminders within Cliq. Zia also functions as a writing aide, assisting users in formulating, refining, and reviewing messages. Users can also conduct sentiment analysis with Zia.

Zoho's expansion in India is propelled by its diverse array of products and suites that are witnessing growing upmarket and mass-market adoption. The primary products driving growth encompass Zoho One, Zoho CX suite (CRM and CRM Plus), Zoho People, Zoho Books, and Zoho Workplace. The sectors in India adopting Zoho include IT hardware, banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI), manufacturing, education, and retail.

Zoho has also increased its partner network in India by 30 per cent year-on-year. To back its ascending upmarket growth in India, the company has launched sales offices in Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Kolkata, and Hyderabad and has also broadened its systems integrator (SI) partner network.