Why IT minister Ashwini Vaishnaw prefers Zoho over Google, Microsoft
What's the story
Ashwini Vaishnaw, Minister for Electronics and Information Technology in India, has endorsed Zoho, an Indian software suite boasting over 55 applications. The endorsement comes as a push for the swadeshi movement, urging people to adopt indigenous platforms and services. In a post on X, Vaishnaw said he is switching to Zoho for documents, spreadsheets, and presentations. He also urged everyone to join Prime Minister Narendra Modi's call for adopting homegrown products and services.
Corporate reaction
'Will make you and the nation proud'
Responding to the Union Minister's announcement, Zoho founder Sridhar Vembu expressed his gratitude. He said, "Thank you Sir, this is a huge morale boost for our engineers who have worked hard for over two decades to build our product suite." Vembu also assured that they would make both the minister and the nation proud with their work at Zoho.
Business reach
Trusted alternative to global giants
Founded in 1996 by Vembu and Tony Thomas, Zoho has grown into a trusted alternative to global giants like Microsoft, Google, and Salesforce. The company serves over 130 million users across more than 150 countries with its suite of software applications for businesses of all sizes. Its clients range from start-ups to large corporations such as Amazon, Netflix, Deloitte, Puma, Toyota, Sony, and L'Oreal.
Product offerings
Zoho's ecosystem for business management
Zoho's ecosystem caters to nearly every business requirement. For customer management, it offers Zoho CRM for tracking leads and driving sales. Other tools include Zoho Campaigns and Zoho Social for digital outreach, while Zoho SalesIQ enables live chat with website visitors. In finance, there are tools like Zoho Books for accounting, Zoho Invoice for billing, and more.
Work solutions
Tools for productivity, communication, HR management, IT security
For productivity, Zoho has Writer, Sheet, and Show as alternatives to Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. Communication is facilitated through Zoho Mail and Cliq while planning/collaboration is supported by other apps like Zoho Notebook, Zoho Meeting, and Zoho Calendar. For human resources management there's Zoho People for employee data management and recruitment tool Recruit. For IT security it provides password manager Vault and remote assistance tool Lens.
Tech advancements
Project management software with multiple tiers
Zoho is also working on its own artificial intelligence models. The company's AI tool, Zia LLM, processes data on Zoho's servers while supporting business tasks such as summarization and decision-making. For project management, Zoho Projects offers three tiers: a free plan for up to five users with 5GB storage; a premium plan for teams of up to 50 users at $4 per user/month when billed annually; an enterprise plan for larger organizations at $9 per user/month on annual billing.