‘Do more with Zoho’ is not a mere coinage rather a reality. With 55+ secure and reliable business applications that help you grow your business, in fact, you can build the whole of your business operations and processes on Zoho.

Kehinde Ogundare, the County Manager of Zoho Corporation (Nigeria), made these remarks last week during a chat with ICT editors at the Company’s Lekki office in Lagos.

Zoho brand, Zoho’s products and Zoho’s priorities for the Nigerian market

He reiterated that the business world is constantly evolving, and every organization is trying to keep up hence Zoho has prepared itself for value addition to these businesses.

Earlier this month, Zoho Corporation hit a 100 million user-milestone across the globe.

Now a full-stack technology company as it evolved from a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) offering, Zoho became the first bootstrapped company to hit this milestone.

This growth is also coming from the offshoot of the company, reaching 1 billion USD in annual revenue in 2022.

“It is simple; we make technology work for you as an individual or business. And that is our commitment”, Ogundare said.

For more than two decades, Zoho, founded by Sridhar Vembu, has grown steadily without external funding, and this has allowed the tech company to preserve its long-term vision and culture without outside pressure or influence.

Serving more than 150 countries, the tech company boasts over 15,000 employees globally in its connected ecosystem.

According to Ogundare, Zoho which is now a full-stack technology company enables users to run their entire operation on the company’s platform, offering services such as website building, finance, human resources, sales and marketing, project management and related services.

“We provide a platform such that your departments don’t work in silos. Zoho platform is now a connected ecosystem.”

As explained by Ogundare, the company in 2005 started with two products, Writer and CRM, hitting its first 1 million client base in 2008.

In seven years, the company added 14 million users to reach the 15 million mark in 2015. The growth became gradual till the present 100 million users.

“This is to show you that people actually get to trust us and with the credibility we have built over the years, people keep coming back, recommending Zoho to their connections”

On the recent data protection law signed into a bill in Nigeria, Ogundare reiterated that Zoho stands for privacy and security, “When you think of any top tech company today in terms of privacy, Zoho comes top. All our products are privacy and security-focused, we are NDPR and GDPR compliant, so this new law is a welcome development.”

Ogundare, however, mentioned that the government needs to do better when it comes to orientation, as a lot of people know nothing about data privacy.

“You can’t just enact a law without a follow-up. You need to let businesses know how crucial the customer data they are keeping and the implication of a data breach”

Ogundare further emphasized that it’s a good initiative, however, the government needs to do more awareness and create more orientation, partnering with private sectors and communities to give people that important information for them to secure data and abide by the data privacy law.

Zoho has also integrated tech stack and this is why the company guarantees data privacy and anti-theft activities.

“We don’t show ads, we don’t track you, these are the things customers want to know, feeling secured that their data is safe”

According to Ogundare, in 2020 the tech company removed all 3rd party trackers from all its products.

More packages for Startups and MSMEs

Ogundare listed Zoho for Startups, Zoho Empower and Enterprise Business Solutions, as three of the company’s focused activities for businesses, especially in Nigeria.

The initiatives help startups that are part of an incubator or accelerator by offering them wallet credits, workshops and more.

“A lot of founders spend too much money on technology, Zoho for startup is an initiative that we created to help emerging startups kick-start their progress.”

As explained by Ogundare, Zoho has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with StartupSouth in Nigeria to offer N500K wallet credit for startups. This credit will be used to test and deploy any of its products.

“We are not just focusing on big businesses, we are looking at the small business as well, what can we do? How can we give you orientation? How can you streamline your business, how can you digitalize, Zoho for startups wants to offer a better approach.”

“Zoho for startups empower businesses in leveraging tech to kick-start. We Orgnise workshops and training for them on how to use the credits on how to use the software to scale up, optimize and automate their operations.”

Zoho Empower aims to build digital literacy in MSMEs, helping them to overcome resistance to tech and digitally transforming their businesses through skill development, and technology counselling, while creating a marketplace for them.

According to Kehinde, Zoho has also partnered with a commercial bank (the financial institution that offers loans to women entrepreneurs in its large SME community) to bring its products to these entrepreneurs at a discounted rate or for free.

Zoho Workplace

Enterprise Business Solutions is an end-to-end software implementation and project management service dedicated to helping mid-to-large-sized companies deploy the best solutions to optimize their business processes.

Speaking about Zoho Workplace, the platform has 16 million users globally and in 2021, it experienced a 34% year-on-year growth with more than 40% of the new migrations coming from two major big tech platforms.

Ogundare further revealed that the SMB customer base increased by 40%, mid-size surged by 36% and enterprises expanded by more than 20%.

With the rise of low-code platforms, users can leverage the Zoho Creator platform to build websites seamlessly for their businesses.

Kehinde Ogundare extolled the leadership of Zoho for the employee culture and prioritizing the welfare of its staff globally with exceptional experience.

“Putting employee and customer experience together makes a company grow faster”

“Zoho is unified and integrated, allowing you to scale. If you start small with us you can expand with it, our platform has the capacity to allow you scale as you grow”

“The more people understand the value it is bringing to their business, the more we are expanding to meet their needs” Ogundare added.

He further assured that Zoho Nigeria (office) located at 2B Bayo Olagoke Close, Admiralty Road, Lekki Phase 1, demonstrates the company’s believe and commitment to growing Nigeria’s economy.

During his recent chat with the press, Kehinde explained how Zoho is leading a charge among Small Businesses in Nigeria using its multiple platforms. He spoke on the Zoho Unified Communications platform, among other solutions. Peter Oluka reports for TechEconomy:

What are the trends affecting Small and Medium Businesses (SMBs) in Nigeria regarding innovation in technology?

Kehinde Ogundare: SMBs often feel compelled to use expensive, big-name technologies, leading to unnecessary costs and improper implementation. It is important for them to evaluate their technology needs, choose affordable solutions, collaborate with professionals for proper implementation, and achieve desired outcomes from technology investments.

How is Zoho’s Unified Communications platform helping these SMBs, and what has been the feedback since it was launched?

Kehinde Ogundare: We have had 106 per cent growth in our revenue from Zoho workplace in the last one year.

We have had 68 per cent user adoption, and migration from other applications has doubled in the last couple of years. I have onboarded many people and businesses to Zoho workplace because people are trying to cut cost and, at the same time, want to get value.

So, when we built this worldclass product, we didn’t compromise on the value of the things you want to get from us. The adoption has been quite impressive, and we hope for more in the next couple of months and years. This innovation will be extremely advantageous for small and medium businesses in Nigeria that plan to scale up by adopting technology.

How is the team handling customer support, and what pricing options are available, especially for your customers in Nigeria?

Kehinde Ogundare: I find this particularly interesting because, for every great product, a support team must be in place. Things cannot go smoothly without these in place.

Our customers need help from time to time. They need options and require assistance with how to navigate the system and the likes. I currently have a support team in the Nigerian office, and also, from the application itself, customers can chat with the support department regarding any complaints or make calls for support anytime they are stuck with anything on the platform.

Regarding pricing, what you see is what you pay for. We have two models of pricing, which are monthly and yearly pricing. You can choose to go for either of the two, and you are not restricted by how you want to pay for the two.

What are you doing differently from your big competitors such as Zoom and Teams?

Kehinde Ogundare: We are investing a lot of resources in research and development and our customer focus. When we are trying to create software on Zoho products, we try to see how people will adopt it and have a unified experience at the same time. We bring a lot of things that are unique to do your business all in one place. Customers can see the effort from us that we are trying to give them world-class products and not compromising on the value they are getting from us even though it is affordable.

How secured is the app?

Kehinde Ogundare: One of our core foundations in Zoho is security and privacy, which we take very seriously. We are at an age where data is like gold, and people’s businesses are at stake.

Currently, when you are using our app, third-party tracking is not allowed, as we are not trying to get money from anybody trying to track or post advertisements. You will never use the Zoho app and get any pop-ups of any ads of any sort. We have covered all the basis for a potential attack and have set up various structures to handle the security issues that likely occur.

How many participants can your platform accommodate in videoconferencing or a meeting?

Kehinde Ogundare: This is dependent on the type of editions you are subscribed to on Zoho. We have various editions, and that will give you a limit to the number of people that can join at once on Zoho meetings and webinars. Currently, it is only available on Mac OS and window devices. It is a desktop application that you can download to give you the unified experience of being able to work with it.

Can you give us an overview of the attraction of Zoho in other markets compared to the Nigerian market?

Kehinde Ogundare: I can confidently say we have global reports that show that adoption across the world is impressive. It has actually doubled. We have got about 30 per cent global revenue growth year-on-year. We have also seen migration from google and microsoft double over the years as well.

The Zoho workplace is the fastest-growing product on the platform. Beyond competitive pricing, what are the other advantages of the app for SMBs?

Kehinde Ogundare: I’ll say Zoho is an experience. When building the app we tried to understand what people and the market needed. Looking at the initiative of growing Zoho trident to being a unified platform for communication and emailing, customers tend to see the efforts of the company. I believe that when you have tried it then acceptability automatically brings about adoption as it is a very friendly app to use. There is also the need for SMBs to leverage collaborative technology in the workplace. A lot of people have told me that Zoho’s mail interface is the best as it gives the opportunity to streamline emails and automate a lot of things on there as well. There are also a lot of features we did not compromise on and gave our customers value.

What challenges have you faced in the Nigerian market?

Kehinde Ogundare: In terms of SMEs, I wouldn’t say we have had a lot of challenges because businesses have realised there is a need to digitalise the way they do their business. We have got a lot of companies trying to digitalise the way they do their business. We’ve got a lot of them trying to digitalise their financing, accounting, bookkeeping, and workspace. People are now trying to adapt to a new way of doing business.

The only challenge might be that people do not really know what type of tool to use in how to address these issues, but then, we have a local team present in Nigeria that can help people get in line in regards to what they are trying to do, their processes and what it will be like to optimise. I see them as catalysts for the adoption of new technology in the country and not a challenge.