Zoho Crosses $1 Billion in Annual Revenue, But Company Mindful of Economic Slowdown

Sridhar Vembu, CEO and co-founder, Zoho announced that the company has crossed an important milestone of $1 billion in annual revenue

Zoho Corp, the Chennai-headquartered global technology company, announced that it has crossed $1 billion in annual revenue. The announcement was made at a press conference held in New Delhi on 8 November, which was presided over by Sridhar Vembu, CEO and co-founder, Zoho Corp and Praval Singh, VP - marketing and customer experience, Zoho Corp. Although the company announced its intention to increase its R&D spend, the fact that the growth having slowed down due to the global economic conditions in 2022 over 2021 was also acknowledged.

“Fundamentals matter now more than ever, and our industry has to learn to lower the friction of technology, so that technology becomes far more affordable. We have also crossed an important milestone of $1 billion in annual revenue. While growth has slowed down quite a bit in 2022 over 2021, our diversified product portfolio and the fact that we save money for customers has helped us so far. We hope to continue to serve our customers by bringing the highest quality offerings at very affordable prices,” said Vembu.

The company, Vembu said, will focus more on research and development rather than marketing. Zoho, which spends three times its marketing spend on R&D and has received 25 patents in the last three years, attributes its growth to: strong R&D capabilities across categories and markets, its diversified portfolio, and to businesses choosing unified offerings over single products. Zoho aims at investing in developing core R&D capabilities, apart from product development. These capabilities, according to Vembu, are data, database and datacenters.

While the company attributes its growth to its superior customer experience and affordable pricing, Vembu acknowledged that the company was mindful of the economic slow down- the tremors of which are being felt across industries. "We have an extremely diversified product line and we are one of the most affordable players. However, we are in a massive earthquake zone of the global economy. The tremors are now being felt. No matter how sound your building - metaphorically speaking - a big enough earthquake will do some damage. We have to hence take this ahead month over month, and quarter over quarter as it is difficult to predict how the situation will change," said Vembu.

Vembu also added that their first priority was to make sure that they were able to keep all their employees and ensure that their jobs are protected. He also stated that they would go slow on the hiring front, and be cautious on this front. Vembu said that to navigate through these uncertain times, what they were hoping to do is become the best choice for their customers in terms of pricing, services, and offerings to outcompete other players. The company says that it is witnessing an uptake of products across different categories, with the top five offerings in India being Zoho One (the operating system for business), CRM Plus (customer experience platform), EX offering led by Zoho People (human resource management platform) and Zoho Workplace (enterprise collaboration platform), and the finance suite led by Zoho Books (GST-compliant accounting software).

Our R&D focus in the coming years is to further unify our technology stack so that we are able to elevate the user experience," added Sridhar Vembu. "We will add 100 more network PoPs around the world in the next five years for enhancing network access. We are also working on adding Indian language support for our AI and blockchain technology for universal validation. Our focus will be on technologies that businesses–regardless of their size and location–will be able to use securely."