India is a key battleground for all global players, and since all the global firms are here, local firms have to develop a global mindset and give them a tough competition

No companies can win the battle for the world market without winning the battle in India, according to Sridhar Vembu, Founder and CEO of Chennai-based Zoho Corp., which provides a single online platform for SMEs to run their entire business.

In an interaction with the media, on the sidelines of the company’s first anniversary celebrations of the launch of Zoho One, an integrated products suite, in Chennai, he also said that world’s first trillion-dollar revenue company will come from India.

“From Microsoft to Google to Amazon, every major tech company has a presence here in India, and they all know the potential of this market. Being a price-sensitive market, India teaches every global company, and local companies for that matter, how to survive in a challenging, tough environment in terms of customer expectations and pricing etc.,” he said.

If you can win this market, you can win any market. But the reverse is not true. “This is why India is a key battleground for all global players. Since all the global firms are here, local firms have to develop a global mindset and give them a tough competition. Otherwise, you are giving them a free run globally,” he added.

On being asked what are Zoho’s chances to be the first trillion dollar tech company in the world, Vembu said that Zoho wants to be among the top 5 globally and number one in India. “We want to be the Zoho of the West.”

Also Read: If the US does not want Indian professionals it is okay, says Zoho CEO Sridhar Vembu

To achieve this objective, Zoho is investing in many areas, including semiconductor technology, programming languages, and medical equipment. “If you look at our product revolution, platform is something we are investing heavily on. A lot of efforts are going into the R&D of programming languages, too. We have a semi conductor business in Bangalore, which is also a crucial part of Zoho’s revolution.. In addition, we are also working on developing new medical equipment,” he elaborated.

“If you see the evolution of the industry, Apple is the company that makes semiconductor, software, hardware and OS for all of their products. You are going to see that kind of integrated companies rise again in technology, and we want to be a very crucial player in that,” he stated.

Zoho also wants to nurture the fast-growing startup ecosystem in India. This is where the fastest growing companies are created. It offers a one-year free access to its tools for fledgling startups. Many startups have taken advantage of this programme, he said.

Zoho One gets new features

Zoho has also added new capabilities to its operating system Zoho One. They include analytics, AI-powered chat assistant Zia, concierge services, and event management capabilities. Since its launch in July last year, Zoho One has won more than 12,000 business customers, of which 36 per cent are from India.

Also Read: Zohodesk was built by engineers in a remote Indian village

“The adoption of Zoho One has exceeded our expectations, and we hope to continue this momentum into its second year. The stats clearly show that customers will use multiple apps from a single suite, if those apps work together more deeply than a patchwork of products from different vendors,” said Vembu. “We see customers combining data from different Zoho and third-party apps — like email campaigns, CRM, customer support, and accounting — to generate new insights and make better decisions. Zoho One has already replaced more than 650 different products, and that number will only grow as we release even more new apps.”

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