Zoho crosses $1 billion revenue mark but uncertain about growth in current macroeconomic situation

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IT company Zoho has crossed the USD 1 billion revenue mark in 2021 with India business growing 77 per cent on year-over-year basis, a top company official said on Tuesday.

Zoho Corp Co-founder and CEO Sridhar Vembu said while the scale of US and Europe contribution to the company’s overall business is higher, India business is growing very fast and it could be the largest market for the company in 10 years.

“We have crossed USD 1 billion in revenue in 2021. Our fastest growing market is India and close to it is the Middle east. Across the board growth rate has come down. The US is number 1 and the European Union is number 2 and India is approaching number 3. India can be number 2 in the next 4-5 years and number 1 in 10 years based on the growth rate at which it is growing,” Vembu told reporters here.

The company has business in over 150 countries and has built a user base of over 80 million in the last 25 years of operations.

It provides operating system software for businesses, software for customer relationship management, human resource management, enterprise collaboration platform and GST-compliant accounting software.

Vembu said that the company’s growth is driven by research and development and a lot of firms are shifting to Zoho applications which is driving growth for the company.

“We have seen growth slow down. You can see across the board. We have a very diversified product suite and offer the most affordable solution but we are in a massive earthquake zone of economy with tremors being already visible.

“We can partly control it through affordable products, R&D and the part which we don’t control is the global economy. Which will dominate, I actually don’t have any idea. We have to take it month on month and quarter on quarter,” he said.

The company has a workforce of 11,000 and has slowed down hiring.

“Our first priority is to keep all the jobs,” Vembu added.

He further said the company is looking to become the top choice for customers to continue on the growth path and will continue to invest in enhancing their experience.

The Chennai-headquartered global technology company also announced that it plans to open 100 network PoPs (points of presence) around the world in the next five years for providing users with faster network, and also double investment for technologies such as blockchain and artificial intelligence.

Zoho Vice President for Marketing and CX, Praval Singh said that customer experience and employee experience verticals are growing very fast for the company and a lot of business is also coming from customers migrating to Zoho applications.