Zoho’s goal is to double channel contribution to overall revenue in India

In a candid interaction with DQ Channels, Hyther Nizam, VP Product Management, Zoho.com talks about the company’s channel strategy and business expansion plans in India.

What are offerings of Zoho in the Indian market?

Zoho.com offers a comprehensive suite of award-winning online business, productivity & collaboration applications. To date, Zoho.com has launched 30+ online applications. All of Zoho products are relevant to Indian market. We have three categories of products: Business Apps, Collaboration Apps and Productivity Apps.  There is Zoho Creator, Zoho CRMPlus and Zoho Sites (this was recently made free) to name a few. We have recently launched a product called CRMPlus which is a bundle of different products for sales persons and Zoho Creator which is a product for developers. We offer all our products as a bundle at very cost effective price.

 How does Zoho’s business model work?

Zoho.com is a division of Zoho Corporation, a privately-held and profitable company. With offices in CA, Austin, Chennai, Yokohama and Beijing, Zoho Corporation serves the technology needs of nearly 10 million customers worldwide. We have a pull business model. We offer basic free versions of our products, and then, as the company expands, they can go for the paid versions which are affordable. Customers use Zoho Applications to run their business processes, manage their information and be more productive while at the office or on the go, without having to worry about expensive or outdated hardware or software.

How are Zoho’s offerings different from competitors?

We differentiate our top line products and business applications in terms of user experience, design, features and cost.  Our products have comprehensive features and we offer them at an affordable rate. As our focus group is SMBs, our products are specially suited for their needs. They get all the basic features and more, for a good price. Also, our apps are scalable. This is an important factor for startups as they can continue using the same apps as they expand. Even if they need to shift to another app, say from Zoho ContactManager to Zoho CRM, they can do so without any hassle. Zoho products are also very easy to use, and people who are not technologically sound can also use them without any trouble.

What is your client base?

We largely focus on SMBs. We have nearly 10 million registered users and 1 lakh paying customers for Zoho.com.  At present Indian customers constitutes nearly 5 to 10 percent of customer base of Zoho.com for each of our product lines. Our customer base is growing at a very fast pace.

What is your partner base in India?

We are expanding our Channel base worldwide and in India. We have designed a special Channel Partner Program for our partners. There are different categories of partners such as reseller partners, technology partners, strategic partners, API Integration partners and referral partners. We have more than 20 partners in India. This includes resellers and developer partners. Ingram Micro, for example, is our distributor.

What is your channel strategy for Indian market?

In the next couple of years, our goal is to double the channel contribution to overall revenue. In India we are in a process of bringing channel partners on board especially for ZohoCRM and our collaboration apps. Majority of our channel partners are for our ZohoCRM and other business applications. We are hiring distributors and reseller partners as part of our Zoho Alliance Partner Program (ZAPP). We have a developer program and certificate position provider program. We are also hiring developers and solution providers to our custom app development platform, Zoho Creator.

How is the growth graph of Zoho since its inception?

Zoho.com commenced in the year 1996. We entered in the IT industry as a bootstrapped company and have not raised any funds in last 18 years; we are in the organic growth path. We started with couple of products like Zoho CRM then we diversified our portfolio in Zoho.com. Today we have 30 plus applications catering different needs of SMEs. We have around 3,000 employees, out of which around 2,500 are in India. All the three divisions --Zoho, ManageEngine and WebNMS-- are profitable and growing every year.

What are the major achievements of Zoho in the last couple of years?

Earlier, our products were working in silos. In the last couple of years, we have brought all the products together with tighter integration, offering a seamless user experience. This year, we have launched CRM Plus which helps your business be more customer-centric, and Zoho Subscriptions, which is a new product for managing recurring billings and subscriptions. We have also made Zoho Sites free, which is big, as the website is the face of a company. Zoho has received numerous awards, including an InfoWorld 2009 "Product of the Year" award, a 2008 PC World "25 Most Innovative Products Award" and a 2007 TechCrunch "Best Enterprise Start-up."

What are your expansion plans in future?

We intend to make Zoho a one-point stop for all business software needs of an SME, touching all the departments in an organization, from sales and marketing to support and finance. Only Zoho can pull it off with seamless integration across the 30+ products that we offer. India is one of the growth markets for us. Being an Indian vendor, we want to expand in the Indian market.