Zoho Corporation
About 30 years ago, when technology was just beginning in India, a small seed was sown from New Jersey (America) which we today know as Zoho Corporation. It was started in 1996 by Sridhar Vembu and Tony Thomas. The special thing was that no external investment or funding was used in this company. Only on the basis of his savings and passion, he laid the foundation of a company named Adventnet, which later became Zoho.
Started from a small room
Initially, the first office of the company was just a 10×10 feet room on the outskirts of Chennai. At that time only 15 people were part of the team and they were working on network management software. At that time, Sridhar Vembu was working in Qualcomm Company in America and his brothers Kumar and Shekhar were running the company in India.
Big decision to say no to funding
In 1997, when the company was growing slowly, a venture capitalist offered him $10 million (valuation around Rs 20 crore) for a 5% stake. But there was a condition in this deal that within 7-8 years the company would either have to be sold or it would have to launch an IPO. Sridhar Vembu rejected this proposal, because he wanted to have complete control over the company and did not want to come under any external pressure.
Self-reliance at every step
The company created new product lines by repeatedly investing its profits. First earned from WebNMS, created IT software named ManageEngine from it, and then from that Zoho was born. This model became their strength and a successful product laid the foundation for the next success.
The dot-com crash and the lessons of survival
When the dot-com crash occurred in 2001 and many funded companies closed, Zoho still survived. Because Vembu and his team kept expenses under control and never expanded at an unreasonable pace. At one time a company even offered to buy him for 25 million dollars, but Vembu still refused.
from big cities to small towns
Vembu believes that talent does not exist only in big cities. That’s why he started opening Zoho offices in small cities. The result was that more people got work at lower cost and the company also became stronger. In 2004, he started “Zoho School of Learning”, where 12th pass students are given free training and stipend. These students later also become a part of the company.
10 crore users and lakh companies
Today Zoho has more than 100 million users in 150 countries and more than 7 lakh companies use its software. In 2023, the company earned revenue of ₹8,703 crore and net profit of ₹2,836 crore.