SaaS Unicorn Zoho’s India Revenue Grew 37% In 2022: Sridhar Vembu

SUMMARY

India has emerged as the fastest growing market for Zoho, cofounder and CEO Sridhar Vembu said

Despite the slow down in Zoho’s growth last month due to macroeconomic headwinds, India was the fastest growing for the bootstrapped unicorn

Zoho is bullish on its communication and collaboration platform Zoho Cliq and launched a smart conference rooms solution Cliq Rooms on Monday

Chennai-based SaaS unicorn Zoho saw a 37% year-on-year growth in its revenue from India in calendar year 2022, its cofounder and CEO Sridhar Vembu said.

Without giving the revenue number for India, Vembu, during a press conference in Bengaluru on Monday (October 9), said that the country has emerged as the fastest growing market for the SaaS giant.

India is currently the third-biggest market for Zoho, after the US and the EU. Vembu believes India can become the second-biggest market for the company in the next 2-4 years and has the potential to emerge as the biggest market over the next 10 years.

Earlier this month, Vembu warned about the health of the global economy citing the slow down in growth witnessed by Zoho in September, across countries and product offerings.

However, the Zoho CEO today said that India was the fastest growing market even amid this slow down in growth.

Some of Zoho’s growth drivers are products such as One, CRM, People, Books, and Workplace, while IT hardware, manufacturing, BFSI, retail and education sectors are currently big contributors to the company’s growth, Vembu said.

Meanwhile, Zoho is also bullish on its communication and collaboration platform Zoho Cliq. The company today launched Cliq Rooms, a smart conference rooms solution, and announced new updates to Zoho Cliq to further boost momentum.

The entire functionality of the Zoho suite is increasingly available through Cliq, which allows employees across a large organisation to communicate and collaborate, provide data in real time to apps, and consume reports, across the desktop and mobile platforms, Vembu said.

Zoho Cliq is one of the most used apps in Zoho One, the company’s business management software.

Zoho claimed Cliq has seen a 30% increase in user migration from Slack and Microsoft Teams in 2022.

Founded in 1996 by Vembu and Tony Thomas, Zoho has more than 12,000 employees globally. The bootstrapped unicorn posted a net profit of INR 2,749 Cr in FY22, registering a 43% jump from INR 1,917 Cr in FY21.

Recently, Zoho surpassed 100 Mn users across its various business applications. The company now serves over 700K businesses across 150 countries.

Zoho competes with the likes of Freshworks, Hubspot, Salesforce, and Microsoft.