Cloud-based software maker Zoho is eyeing India as the next big opportunity, as the software-as-a-service (SaaS) segment in the West has saturated with too many players overcrowding the largest market. With an annual investment of more than Rs 10 crore allocated for marketing in India, the company believes enterprise readiness for SaaS in India will be fuelled by the central government’s push to bring informal businesses into formal economy.
Zoho, which provides a suite of products for business operations through a SaaS model, is using the geographical advantage by creating brand awareness among Indian enterprises through localised commercials and partner channels over its global competitor Zendesk, which also announced its focus on India early this year.
“India is on the cusp of major growth. Our governance systems are getting better and we have states competing with each other for business. There will be a wave of technology adoption by Indian enterprises and we want to play a major part in it,” Sridhar Vembu, Founder of Zoho told.
The California-headquartered company was incorporated in Chennai in 1996 and has since grown into one of India’s top product-based software companies with 150,000 enterprise customers.
It competes with Microsoft and Salesforce.com, among others, and offers a variety of products including a customer relationship management (CRM) platform that competes with the product offerings by San Francisco-based Zendesk and Chennai-based Freshdesk, along with other global players that have sprung up, fragmenting the CRM market.
Products offered by these SaaS companies allow businesses to access and manage critical business and customer information anytime, in multiple languages from multiple devices using cloud technology. For this service, enterprise customers pay a monthly or annual fees based on usage. “India is in the top five markets for Zoho in terms of revenue generation right now. In the next five years, we envision India to be in our top two markets,” Vembu said.
Source: Economic Times
