India Tipped To Become Second Biggest Market For ManageEngine: Zoho Exec

SaaS giant Zoho expects India to become the second largest market for its enterprise IT management solution ManageEngine by next year. 

“India is one of the fast growing markets for us, and ranks at number three today globally, after the US and the UK… Six years ago, the number was very different, India was not even in the top ten… Probably by the end of this year or next year, India will move to number two position,” said ManageEngine’s regional director Arun Kumar. 

Speaking at a media roundtable organised by the company in Mumbai on Monday (March 3), Kumar said that India was well tipped to displace UK as the second biggest source of revenue for the vertical in the coming year.

He also noted the India market contributes nearly 10% to ManageEngine’s global revenues, adding that the vertical currently caters to 7,500 enterprises in India across various sectors such as BFSI, public sector, healthcare, education. 

Kumar added that cities such as Mumbai, Delhi NCR, Bengaluru, and Hyderabad accounted for the biggest chunk of ManageEngine’s revenues in the country. The company also noted that the vertical was witnessing 30% year-on-year (YoY) growth in India, adding that its cloud services arm too was clocking more than 60% YoY growth in the country. 

Elaborating on the company’s partner-driven model, Kumar added that ManageEngine’s close to 80% to 90% of the revenues were coming through channel partners and system integrators. 

At the same event, Zoho’s group CEO Shailesh Kumar Davey said that the company is working on developing its own large language model (LLM), which will focussed on Indian languages. Davey added that the company plans to integrate the yet-to-be developed LLM into its products and make it available for businesses at the “right time”.

As of now, Zoho is building two AI foundational models – a general LLM and an Indic language model designed for Indian users. While the former is likely to be launched this year itself, there appears to be no clarity regarding the timeline of the launch of the latter. 

The media roundtable came a month after cofounder Sridhar Vembu stepped down from his role as Zoho’s group CEO. 

Founded in 1996 by Vembu and Tony Thomas, Zoho offers a suite of cloud-based business software applications. Growing significantly over the years, the bootstrapped startup’s sales crossed the $1 Bn mark in the financial year 2022-23 (FY23). 

Zoho reported an operating revenue of INR 8,703.6 Cr in FY23 as against INR INR 6,710.7 Cr in FY22. Meanwhile, the Chennai-based startup’s net profit rose a mere 3% to 2,836 Cr in the fiscal under review from INR 2,749 Cr in FY22.