Zoho Corp

Zoho pauses annual pay hikes, cuts marketing spend amid rising AI costs

Homegrown technology firm Zoho Corporation has paused its annual pay hikes and pruned its marketing expenditure, citing sharply escalating Artificial Intelligence (AI) infrastructure costs and an uncertain outlook for the software sector, founder Sridhar Vembu said on Tuesday. In a post on social media platform X, Vembu described the global employment landscape for the software sector as "grim" and said that the company has kept its headcount flat for the past 18 months while making efforts to avoid mass layoffs. "The business outlook for software is uncertain, and AI has raised costs dramatically with a) A massive 4-fold increase in server prices which we need for data centres and b) AI usage increasing rapidly, leading to much higher expenses, which we are trying to control," Vembu said. He added that a "challenging geopolitical backdrop" has further compounded these operational pressures. Outlining the internal measures taken to navigate the headwinds, Vembu stated that the comp

Zoho launches Zia Chat, enters vertical SaaS with 7 industry apps

The AI interface brings information, context and workflows into one conversational platform as Zoho expands into seven industry-specific applications

Zoho launches Zia Chat, enters vertical SaaS with seven industry apps

Homegrown software company Zoho on Wednesday launched Zia Chat, a unified AI interface for businesses, and announced its entry into vertical SaaS with seven industry-specific applications spanning retail, automotive, BFSI, healthcare, education, real estate and restaurants. Zia Chat is built natively into Zoho's ecosystem and gives users a single conversational interface to find information, generate leads, resolve support issues and analyse data across sales, marketing, support, HR and finance functions, the company said. "Our goal is to commoditise intelligence so customers can get work done, without incurring high costs on tokens," Sridhar Vembu, Chief Scientist and Co-founder, Zoho, said at a briefing. Zia Chat will reduce token consumption for users, and will be available for early access in a month, initially in English. "There is an interface crisis, and people spend too much time searching for the right context and data. We strip away the UIs (user interfaces) of different

Zoho invests ₹70 cr in ONDC to boost digital commerce network for MSMEs

Global technology company Zoho Corporation on Wednesday announced an investment of Rs 70 crore in the Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC) to support the development of sovereign technology in the country. The investment is aimed at making technology more accessible and inclusive for businesses of all types and sizes, particularly Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs), by helping them overcome structural constraints in digital commerce. "Zoho Corporation...has invested Rs 70 crore in the Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC) to support the development of sovereign technology in India," the Chennai-headquartered firm said in a statement. Zoho already facilitates digitisation for MSMEs through its finance suite of applications, which includes the Vikra seller app on the ONDC network, alongside Zoho ERP, Zoho Books, Zoho Inventory and Zoho Commerce. The company's investment will continue to help expand the network's ecosystem and accelerate adoption, enabling more busines

US court orders Zoho's Sridhar Vembu to post $1.7 bn bond in divorce case

A US court has ordered Zoho co-founder Sridhar Vembu to post a $1.7 billion bond in his divorce case and halted a restructuring to protect his ex-wife's asset rights

Zoho's Arattai to roll out end-to-end encryption tonight: Sridhar Vembu

Zoho-backed homegrown messaging platform Arattai is poised for a big update with end-to-end encryption scheduled to be rolled out on Tuesday night, founder Sridhar Vembu said in a social media post. Vembu said many more "cool features" on Arattai are in the works once "this big transition" is through. "Please update the Arattai app from the Play Store/App Store and please encourage your contacts to do so. The end-to-end encryption will be enabled Tuesday night IST," Vembu said in a post on X on Tuesday. He explained that users will be able to only exchange end-to-end encrypted messages if both they and their contacts are using the latest version of Arattai. "If you are on the latest Arattai version and your contact is on the latest version, you will only be able to use end-to-end encrypted chat with that contact," he said. In such cases (where both sides are on the latest version), a new end-to-end chat session will be created for that contact, and the old non-end-to-end encrypted

Dell-Nvidia platform helps Zoho in 'accelerating' AI solutions delivery

Zoho is leveraging the Dell AI Factory with NVIDIA to scale its multimodal LLMs and agentic AI tools, ensuring secure, privacy-first infrastructure aligned with India's data rules

Zoho enters AI race with its own LLM, proprietary speech-to-text models

Homegrown technology company Zoho on Thursday announced its proprietary large language (LLM) model designed for enterprises using its suite of products, the latest move reflecting bold ambitions of Indian firms to build and innovate on their own AI stacks in the global tech race. Zoho said it is also rolling out automatic speech recognition models for speech-to-text conversion in English and Hindi. The Chennai-headquartered company plans to further expand the available languages, beginning with other Indian and European languages. Zoho top management said it has not seen these AI advances impact jobs and hirings. The company further said it grew 32 per cent in 2024 in India, its second largest market globally after the US. The growth was driven by industries such as ITeS, banking financial services and insurance or BFSI, manufacturing, retail, and education. At the Zoholics India -- its annual user conference held this year in Bengaluru -- the company announced proprietary large ..

SaaS delays causing time, cost overruns for Indian firms: IDC-Zoho survey

A substantial chunk, nearly 75 per cent of Indian enterprises that adopted Software as a Service (SaaS) solutions since 2020 have experienced implementation delays, leading to average timeline overrun of 57 per cent and a cost overrun of 43 per cent, according to a latest survey that tabulated the business impact of such prolonged deployment cycles. The study titled, "IDC State of SaaS Adoption in India Survey 2024", commissioned by technology company Zoho, found that these setbacks have led to an average loss of Rs 5.6 crore in missed business opportunities, besides impacting employee productivity, customer experience, and competitive positioning. As businesses continue investing in SaaS solutions to drive digital transformation, modernise operations, and enhance agility, the speed of implementation has become critical, the survey said, noting that implementation delays remain a significant barrier, preventing businesses from realising the full value of their digital ...

Tech tycoon and former Zoho CEO Sridhar Vembu reacts on joining politics

Tech tycoon Sridhar Vembu reacted to rumours that he was going into politics after resigning as CEO of Zoho Corporation. His post comes after speculation went around that he was joining politics

'Naked greed': Zoho's Sridhar Vembu blasts rival Freshworks for layoffs

Freshworks 'should not expect any loyalty from employees ever', he says

Inside ManageEngine's AI-powered growth strategy towards $1 bn in revenue

Since its first AI rollout in 2014, ManageEngine has gradually integrated various AI-powered features across its offerings, including anomaly detection and predictive forecasting

SaaS major Zoho Corporation announces an updated 'CRM For Everyone'

Currently in a beta phase, Zoho plans a full roll out by the end of 2024

Zoho plans $700 mn foray into chipmaking, seeks incentives from govt

Semiconductors are a key plank of India's business agenda, with a $10 billion package in place to boost the industry as it hopes to compete with countries such as Taiwan in a few years

Zoho launches PoS solution called Zakya for small, medium enterprises

Digital service priced at Rs 649 per month helps in inventory management, omnichannel sales and other back-office tasks

India may become Zoho's 2nd-largest mkt in 2-3 years: Sridhar Vembu

Most of our products are now integrated with ChatGPT. We are rolling out integrations every week, he says

SaaS major Zoho sees strong traction for its collaboration platform Cliq

These declarations were made during Zoholics India, the company's annual user conference in Bengaluru

Zoho surpasses 100 million users across over 55 business applications

Zoho has added at least 50 million users. Its user base has grown from 1 million users in 2008 to 100 million in 2023

Open challenge to OpenAI, Google: Zoho working to build its own AI model

Zoho's announcement to develop its own LLMs comes after OpenAI founder and CEO Sam Altman said that it would be "hopeless" for an Indian startup with $10 million in funding to build foundational LLM

'Complete fiction': Zoho CEO Vembu denies wife's allegations in magazine

Article in Forbes magazine says he wife and their special needs son in the US