Zoho’s key product suite grows 2.5 times in two years

Zoho’s product suite Zoho One has grown two-and-a-half times over the last two years and has a customer base of 50,000 businesses, as companies increasingly opt for full-fledged solutions and economically scalable SaaS platforms amid a growing tendency to closely monitor software spending, a top executive said.

Zoho One combines more than 45 applications that allow businesses to run sales, marketing, HR, analytics, and more. Zoho decided to offer a bundled package of apps and create a platform for businesses to build integrations — or even their own apps — through Zoho One.

Launched five years ago, Zoho One has crossed key revenue and customer base milestones, Hariharan Muralimanohar, head of marketing for Zoho One, told ET.

“Zoho One is our top revenue-making suite right now, after CRM (customer relationship management) and CRM Plus suites,” he said, adding that the suite’s contribution as a percentage of Zoho’s customer base had risen steadily over the years.

He didn’t disclose the revenue of the privately held company or that generated by the product suite.

The suite has grown globally at a compounded annual rate of 133% since inception, with pandemic-driven digital adoption giving a surge to apps like video-conferencing platform Zoho Meeting and others such as projection management and collaboration software. In India, Zoho One has grown 118% CAGR.

Muralimanohar said demand for software from tier-II and -III cities accounted for nearly 45% of the total demand matrix, indicating strong adoption of digital technologies in non-metros. The IT sector, banking and financial services, retail and education verticals remained strong buyers.

About 37.5% of Zoho One’s new customers emerge from mid-market and enterprise businesses, while over 92% of early adopters of the product suite have opted for licence upgrades, he said.

Zoho One offers customers a set of developer tools to help them make their own apps, Muralimanohar said. Zoho Creator, for example, is a low-code app development platform. All apps that are part of Zoho One were built from the ground up, as opposed to acquisition-powered software product suites that may not offer the connectedness and data integrations, he said.

Zoho, led by Sridhar Vembu, believes that the market is viewing SaaS software closely from an expenditure standpoint, with a view to limit purchases of software with inflated pricing.

“With an economic downturn staring you, it becomes sensible to optimise on costs. Companies are exploring ways to reduce cost of ownership,” Muralimanohar said.

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