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	<img align="" alt="Zoho's made-in-rural-India software product to take on Zendesk, Freshdesk" class="imgCont" height="275" src="http://bsmedia.business-standard.com/_media/bs/img/article/2015-08/04/full/1438696742-9813.jpg" style="border: 1px solid #DDD; margin-right: 10px; padding: 1px; float: left; z-index: 0;" title="Zoho's made-in-rural-India software product to take on Zendesk, Freshdesk" width="370" />
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		Zoho Corp, the Chennai-based software maker, has built products that have taken on Salesforce, Google and Microsoft. Now, it has Zoho Desk, a customer software platform built in rural India that will take on two large rivals, local product FreshDesk and global major Zendesk.</div>
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		Over 150 engineers at Tenkasi, 650 km south of Chennai in Tirunelveli district, known for its proximity to the Courtallam waterfalls, have designed and built Zoho Desk over five years and will also expand Zoho&#39;s made-in-India software offerings for global customers.</div>
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		&quot;Zoho has challenged conventional wisdom so many times in its history,&quot; says Sridhar Vembu, chief executive officer of Zoho Corp. &nbsp;&quot;In an industry where companies have come to believe that the only location that matters is a few square miles near downtown San Francisco, we are proving that a determined and sincere group of people can build path-breaking products anywhere,&rdquo; he adds.</div>
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		Tirunelveli has over 25 engineering colleges and hosts US firms Syntel, a technology services provider, and TechFetch, a technology-focused job-generating platform founded by US-based Prabhakaran Murugaiah who has roots in the region.</div>
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		Zoho Desk, the sixth product the company launched in 2016, uses contextual information such as customer history, activities and prior issues to help service agents provide a speedy resolution.</div>
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		According to Forrester, 42% of service agents are unable to resolve customer issues due to disconnected systems and multiple applications that hold relevant customer data. In almost 50 per cent of instances, customers report service agents fail to answer relevant questions. Lack of sufficient context of the customer&rsquo;s problem is often the reason.&nbsp;</div>
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		&quot;We built the first software products from India when IT services were the rage and established them in the global market. We are now showcasing something that has never been done before: the first software product created in rural India, world-class in its refinement, competing with the best,&quot; says Vembu.</div>
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		Zoho, which &nbsp;continues to be bootstrapped because of Vembu&#39;s aversion to venture funding, has helped make Chennai India&#39;s hub for software-as-a-service companies, whose business model is to let customers pay a small fee for the software they use as opposed to conventional models of selling expensive licences to clients.</div>
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		&ldquo;We believe rural talent should not have to leave home to find opportunity. Our broken urbanisation model creates severely overcrowded and polluted megacities and denudes rural areas of talent. That is why what Zoho Tenkasi is doing matters,&rdquo; he adds. The company has around 4,500 employees and more than 20 million users across the world.</div>
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		Rajendran Dandapani, director of engineering, Zoho, says the challenges the company had to face in building a team in Tenkasi included Internet provisioning and talent acquisition. These it addressed through hard work and by keeping expectations low, he adds.</div>
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		&quot;We recruited from local colleges, word of mouth was a big source. Many employees in our Chennai office were from down south and this was a good opportunity for them to stay close to their families,&quot; he says. &quot;We did not realise so many would want to go back to their hometowns. We might eventually look at a 50-50 split of our employee strength between Chennai and Tenkasi,&quot; Dandapani says.</div>
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Designed by over 150 engineers, Zoho Desk, a customer software platform, has been built in over five years

Zoho's made-in-rural-India software product to take on Zendesk, Freshdesk

Zoho takes on Zendesk, Freshdesk with platform built in a village

Designed by over 150 engineers, Zoho Desk, a customer software platform, has been built in over five years

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