The company revealed this during its annual user conference, Zoholics Nigeria, held on Monday, September 8, 2025, in Lagos.

Kehinde Seun Ogundare, country head for Zoho Nigeria, said the company is not in the market for short-term profits. “We are not just here to make money and leave, you know, I said from the beginning,” Ogundare said.

He stressed Zoho’s guiding philosophy, “Privately Held. Publicly Responsible”, which reiterates its focus on long-term value rather than quick exits.

Key Announcements for Nigeria

Zoho outlined three major commitments to Nigerian businesses:

• Local billing and naira pricing to ease exchange-rate challenges.
• Hiring and expanding local teams to improve customer support.
• Maintaining access to 55+ products across finance, workplace, CRM, HR and collaboration tools.

The company shared growth statistics to back its local drive:

• 29 years in operation, with over 18,000 employees globally.
• Products used in more than 150 countries.
• Average customer tenure of about 45 months.
• 75 million registrations in Nigeria over the last five years.
• Local growth rates of 64.07% in 2021, 83.68% in 2022, and 74.28% in 2024.

According to Zoho, the top sectors using its software in Nigeria include services, financial services, professional services, real estate and construction, retail, energy, media, and education.

Building on One Technology Stack

Zoho emphasised that all its 55+ applications run on a single technology stack. This, it said, reduces integration costs and makes its software affordable to SMEs. 

Its “composable” product model lets customers start with individual apps, then scale into customised suites or vertical solutions. For SMEs in Nigeria, this means they can adopt an off-the-shelf bookkeeping or HR product, or commission a tailored workflow without rebuilding everything from scratch.

Spotlight on Zia AI

One of the most interesting parts of the event was Zoho’s in-house AI platform, Zia, Zoho’s AI assistant built for automation and business intelligence across its apps.

The Zia suite includes language, speech and automation tools, as well as features that allow customers to create automated assistants and custom apps. Technical features include:

• Language models available in multiple parameter sizes (1.3B, 2.6B and 7B), with plans to scale further.
• Zia ASR, a home-grown speech recogniser benchmarked by the company against global competitors on word-error-rate.
• Agent Studio and Zia Agents marketplace offering pre-built assistants for sales, marketing, UX, support and other workflows.
• Co-Creator and low-code/no-code tools to let non-developers build applications and automation.

Zoho described Zia as a practical tool which enables businesses to automate workflows, delegate routine tasks to AI assistants, and focus more on decision-making and growth.

Privacy and Infrastructure

Beyond features, Zoho stressed that it owns its full technology stack, from networks and storage to compute and applications. This, it said, helps it control costs, safeguard privacy and deliver products built for enterprise needs.

Local billing, local hiring and local support were framed as part of the same strategy, reducing total cost of ownership while making the tools more relevant to Nigeria’s business environment.

What it Means for Nigerian SMEs

For local companies, Zoho’s strategy could bring three immediate benefits:

1. Affordability: naira billing removes the pressure of paying in foreign currency.
2. Faster support: more Nigerian teams mean better response times and understanding of local challenges.
3. Customisation: the “composable” product marketplace and low-code tools make it easier to build tailored solutions without major development projects.

Zoholics Nigeria revealed that Zoho wants to be more than a global software vendor. The company is working to adapt to local realities, cut expenses for businesses, and build long-term trust.

Zoho will also be providing its contract management solution, Zoho Contracts, free for three months to help businesses improve compliance to the Nigeria Data Protection Law.

The company, as part of its Zoho for Startups programme, has also partnered with #StartupSouth, an organisation that works towards the development of startups from South and South-East Nigeria.

These announcements were made on the sidelines of Zoholics Nigeria, the company’s annual user conference, held at Lagos.

“Our growth is a direct result of Nigerian businesses embracing cloud technology, especially unified platforms, to digitally transform and build resilience to adapt to challenging market conditions. Zoho’s unified technology stack, built from the ground up, allows us to meet such transformation needs of businesses with robust solutions that deliver consistently seamless user experiences at unbeatable value,” said Ali Shabdar, Regional Director, MEA, Zoho.

Zoho’s growth in Nigeria is primarily driven by adoption of Zoho One, the operating system for business, and Zoho Workplace, a unified enterprise collaboration platform. Additionally, Zoho CRM Plus (unified customer experience platform), Zoho Books (accounting software), and Zoho Desk (helpdesk software) are the other top-selling products in the country.

Zoho also grew its partner network by 22% and more than doubled its employee count in 2022 in Nigeria to reinforce its local presence and better serve the customers.

“Our transnational localism strategy of being locally rooted while staying globally connected is also key to our growth in Nigeria as we are able to serve our customers directly with our locally hired teams in Lagos. Zoho is also one of the few vendors in Nigeria today that continues to provide their offerings in Naira, thereby protecting businesses from the fluctuating dollar rates, and ensuring that enterprise technology remains accessible to businesses of all sizes. Our partnership with #StartupSouth, and the special offer on Zoho Contracts, are further steps that underscore our commitment to serve the business community in the region,” said Kehinde Ogundare, Country Head, Zoho Nigeria.

Partnership with Startup South

Zoho has partnered with #StartupSouth through its Zoho for Startups programme. As part of this partnership, startups associated with #StartupSouth, which are new customers for Zoho, can avail Zoho Wallet credits worth ₦ 470,000.

This credit can be used to purchase or upgrade any of Zoho’s 55+ products, including Zoho One, the operating system for business, over a period of 360 days.

Zoho One offers a unified platform that brings together over 50 Zoho products from CRM to HR management. The startups will also receive training to help them leverage Zoho’s products for their growth and in a way that they can easily scale.

“One of #StartupSouth’s goals is to provide startups associated with us easy access to comprehensive tech solutions that offer great value, are easy to use, and have the capability to grow with the businesses as they scale. We are happy to partner with Zoho, as they offer a wide range of business apps that can empower startups to quickly digitalise most of their business areas in one go, and streamline and unify their operations for better management and holistic visibility. With this partnership with Zoho, we are looking forward to helping budding businesses by removing access barrier to enterprise technology,” said Uche Aniche, Convener, #StartupSouth.

“Through the Zoho for Startups programme, we intend to onboard as many startups as we can, and be a part of their entrepreneurial journey right from the start. Keeping in mind Zoho’s vision and mission on ‘serving the underserved’, we carefully choose whom we collaborate with. I am glad to be partnering with #StartupSouth whose passion and focus on supporting the startups is very much in sync with the ethos of our programme. Nigeria is one of the hotbeds in Africa for entrepreneurs to thrive and innovate,” said Kuppulakshmi Krishnamoorthy, Global Head, Zoho for Startups.

Zoho Contracts to help businesses improve compliance with NDPL

The Nigerian Data Protection Law came into force earlier this year. NDPL mandates all businesses to ensure that their contracts include provisions for data security and breach notifications, third-party vendors adhere to NDPA standards, and international contracts fulfil the criteria for cross-border transfer of personal data.

In case of non-compliance, businesses risk the loss of consumer trust and potential legal action, apart from a potential fine of up to ₦10 million or 2% of annual gross revenue.

With Zoho Contracts, businesses can create contract templates with new/revised clauses for NDPA compliance, use analytics to quickly identify existing contracts with a specific clause, anonymise counterparty data on request, and track and monitor their contractual obligations with reminder alerts.

With 55+ apps in nearly every major business category, Zoho Corporation is one of the world’s most prolific technology companies.

Headquartered in Chennai, India, Zoho is privately held and profitable with more than 15,000 employees.

The company, which grew by 74% last year in Nigeria, also announced that it will be opening an office in Lagos and hiring more employees locally for customer-facing roles (no date has been announced yet).

The announcements were made on the sidelines of the company’s first user conference in the country— Zoholics Nigeria —that was held at Four Points by Sheraton Lagos.

“As part of ‘transnational localism’ strategy where our growth is underpinned with that of the region, we bring our global expertise to support the creation of self-sufficient economic clusters,” said Hyther Nizam, President, Zoho MEA at the Zoholics Nigeria. “We started by offering our products in local pricing, hiring locally and now by opening an office here to cater to our growing customer base, even as we continue to grow our partner network in the country. Furthermore, the Zoho Africa Digital Enabler package is designed to provide micro and small businesses a segue to digital transformation.”

Zoho Africa Digital Enabler package

The Zoho Africa Digital Enabler package is aimed to help small businesses with up to five employees jumpstart their digital journey.

This package which was introduced at Zoholics Nigeria will provide new users of Zoho a collection of 10 leading apps at a 50% discount starting from July 1, 2022 for a period of three months:  

Zoho Workplace: Zoho Workplace is a unified platform that brings together collaboration, productivity, and communications tools and integrates them into other business processes. Centered around its secure business email (Zoho Mail), team chat (Zoho Cliq), and online office suite (Zoho Writer, Zoho Sheet, Zoho Show, and Zoho WorkDrive), Zoho Workplace features  eight tightly integrated apps that hybrid teams can use to get work done and collaborate with each other easily. The platform also includes video conferencing (Zoho Meeting), an enterprise townhall (Zoho Connect), AI-based search (Zia Search) and other security and administrative tools, enabling businesses to communicate and collaborate effectively in a hybrid environment. Zoho Workplace is the most popular offering of Zoho in Nigeria.

Bigin: Bigin, a pipeline-centric CRM, was designed specifically to help MSMEs keep track of their customers and improve customer relationships without having to worry about high costs or complicated features.

It can be set up in 30 minutes, with options to create multiple pipelines with customisable stages based on a company’s operation style.

Users can make or receive calls from within the system and have contextual information ready at hand.

Repetitive tasks can be automated, and prospects can be engaged through email, web forms, online meetings and Twitter. It also provides contextual dashboards to help businesses have an overview of their sales.

Bigin integrates with popular third-party business apps, such as Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, Zoom, Mailchimp, etc.

Zoho Invoice: With Zoho Invoice, businesses can create and send customised invoices, manage multiple projects, track time, and bill customers accurately.

They can also improve their cash flow by automatically sending payment reminders to customers, and get paid online faster through debit/credit cards and PayPal. Moreover, businesses can record and track expenses by simply scanning their expense receipts.

They will also be able to track tax levied on every transaction, allow customers to view their invoices, projects, and make payments through the self-service portal.

Businesses will have complete visibility of their finances with access to 30+ real-time reports on metrics such as best-selling products, pending payments, and more. Zoho Invoice is available for free, globally.

Businesses can integrate Zoho Invoice and Bigin to sync customer information and items, thereby eliminating the need to enter redundant information.

They can also contextually integrate with Zoho Workplace applications for increased collaboration and productivity. Mobile apps for iOS and Android devices are available for all the products.

Businesses availing Zoho Africa Digital Enabler package will have access to standard support available to them. That allows access to knowledge base, community forums, a self-service portal, email support and remote assistance.

It also includes live chat support and telephonic support during working hours five days a week.

“For small businesses, enterprise technology is prohibitively priced and inaccessible,” said Nizam. “We want to remove the technology adoption barrier and help them kickstart their digital transformation journey, that will in turn help them stay nimble and quickly adapt to changing market conditions. The products are available in local pricing, helping businesses avoid cost fluctuations due to changing dollar value, which is beneficial in the current turbulent economy. We hope that Nigerian businesses will avail this plan and fast-track their growth by leveraging cloud technology.”