Zoho is one of the largest Indian online software company for all kinds of small and large scale businesses. This platform provides a comprehensive suite for IT products that can be used efficiently as a medium to run a business. It has various ways to expand a business, such as the featured applications and the applications that help in remote networking. Zoho also covers sales and marketing, e-mail and collaboration along with finance.
Journey of Zoho
Sridhar Vembu and Tony Thomas founded the software development company in 1996 in Pleasanton, California. Zoho currently operates majorly in three countries namely, India, America, and the middle east, its main headquarters is in Tamil Nadu, India, and Pleasanton.
Since then, Zoho has had three major divisions, the first one being zoho.com, which deals with the online business, collaboration applications, and business productivity. The second division is WebNMS, which deals with the needs of OEMs, and lastly, ManageEngine, which deals with the IT management. And these three divisions show the three significant steps about how the company had evolved over the years and is one of the leading online operating systems today.
Furthermore, the company had spread its software networking slowly starting from Zoho docs to Zoho meetings to invoice mails and much more.
The major stake owner –
One of the Indian Billionaire Businesswomen, Radha Vembu, owns a significant stake of the Zoho Corporation. She is also the product manager for Zoho Mail. A graduate from the Indian Institute of Technology Madras with a degree in industrial management. She is the sister of the co-founder of Zoho Corporation, Sridhar Vembu. Currently, she is situated in Chennai, India.
The founder’s story –
Sridhar Vembu was born in a small village in Thanjavur district, Tamil Nadu. He belonged to a family of farmers, but his hard work and intelligence took him places like IIT, Madras, and Princeton University, New Jersey.
He started his career with Qualcomm in San Diego, California. In his late 20s, he founded AdventNet along with Tony Thomas. As I have already mentioned the initial intent and focus of the company, let’s move on to the vision of Vembu.
The Zoho founder had a vision of creating small offices in rural areas to attract local talents. Mr. Vembu has stated that he feels people migrating from villages to the city is a bad idea. He wants to build “Satelite connected office centers where approximately 20 people could work in small villages.” He visions to educate, train, and employ rural talents with the help of his educational venture, Zoho University.
In 2011, he set his visions in motion by buying the land of 4 acres in a village, which is 650 km away from Chennai, in Tenkasi district. Currently, the visionary leader works from the village and has created products like Zoho Desk to prove that you don’t need to be in an urban area to be innovative.
The 53 years old visionary has an extended plan to connect villages with technology with the aid of his company, and the results have started showing. Presently Zoho bases are located at a minimum of 10 villages where they have their engineers working closely with the villagers to help them in their tasks, mainly farming and teaching.
Zoho at Present –
Today, this cloud-based software giant has over 50 million registered customers from all over the world in 2020. A lot of businesses have collaborated with Zoho since it welcomed collaboration since 2007, after the launch of Zoho docs and Zoho meetings. Most of these companies come from various fields like sales, marketing, automation have profited hugely with their collaboration with Zoho. In 2017, Zoho launched its single comprehensive suite app, which has all Zoho products and is known as Zoho One.
The Zoho headquarter is based on Chennai, India, but Zoho has multiple bases all around the world from California, USA to Singapore, China, and Japan.
Zoho’s Business Model –
Zoho’s CRM or Customer-Relationship Management has been a key to its success. Let’s understand what it is and what are the benefits which Zoho enjoyed through its CRM.
One of the best features which customers love about a company is the option to choose. It is the versatility or the power to customize, which empowers the admirers of the brand. Zoho understands that due to their wide range of IT products, their customer base is different too. Each of them has different needs and choices. Hence the Zoho CRM offers the option to customize and meet the specific demands based on their business. Anyone from a start-up, global enterprise to healthcare, legal, travel, tax, and even non-profits use the Zoho CRM to enhance its customer’s support, marketing, and sales. Here is a list of the versatility of CRM based on the need of the companies –
- B2B
- B2C
- SMBs
- Enterprises
Why do these companies rely on Zoho’s CRM? What do they get?
- Boost sales – Zoho CRM gives you accurate and collective data based on several factors. This means that the CRM suggests precise leads on which you can work, nurture, and attract customers. This also means that you won’t have to waste time on attracting people who will only spend your time and be a false lead.
- Business Process – Zoho CRM ensures that your team follows standard protocols and efficient processes by guiding them and hence enhancing your team’s productivity.
- Decision Making – When you have accurate data, you can understand. Zoho CRM provides objective data and comprehensive analysis of your decision-makers and hence ensures that every aspect has been thought about and dealt with to produce the best results.
Latest Developments –
Amidst the pandemic when the work from home and online classes are the new commons. Over 1.5 billion students are stuck at home, unable to go to school or colleges due to the global lockdown. But this is also the best time for e-learnings and e-classes.
Zoho Corporation has launched online classes. These include basic educational courses along with course discovery where you can learn various things such as sports, fitness, yoga, art, and even robotics. The classes are helpful for both college and school students.
Zoho has already signed up with around 500 schools in Maharashtra to provide online classes. To assist the government in providing quality education, Zoho has also promised that classes are free for all government school students. For private schools, the product is free for streaming up to 100 students.
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