Decoding Zoho, India's ‘Swadeshi’ answer to Google Workspace, Microsoft 365

Zoho Corp. is emerging as the flag-bearer of India's growing self-reliance drive in technology, nearly three decades after it was founded in Chennai.

Sridhar Vembu, co-founder and chief scientist of Zoho Corp. Zoho's fortunes have aligned neatly with India’s ‘Swadeshi’ technology push. (Image via Twitter)

Its business management apps, email and messaging platforms, and workplace tools are gaining traction among policymakers and the common man alike, underscoring the “Swadeshi” wave in the world's most populous nation.

Zoho's story is different from India's $280-billion IT services industry, for it focuses on building software in-house, in India for the world, and not serving as a backoffice for clients stateside. It's a profitable “startup”, if we can call it that, a rarity among upstarts headquartered in Bengaluru.

Its philosophy stands out in India’s startup ecosystem—no external funding, no dependency on foreign cloud services, and complete in-house operations.

Zoho hosts its products on its own servers, built and maintained by Indian engineers, and pays taxes in India on its global income—a stance that Vembu says underscores the company's commitment to “economic and technological independence”.

In recent weeks, this self-reliant approach has dovetailed neatly with the government’s call for a “Swadeshi digital ecosystem”.

Zoho One: Marketed as an “operating system for business”, bundling apps that manage sales, operations, finance, HR and analytics, Zoho One offers enterprise clients a flat per-employee pricing model, allowing firms to use all Zoho applications for one subscription fee.

In India, that’s typically ₹1,800 per user per month, substantially lower than comparable bundles from Google Workspace or Microsoft 365.

Zoho CRM: It's flagship customer-relationship/sales automation tool. The ‘Standard’ plan is priced at ₹800/user/month, ‘Professional’ at ₹1,400, ‘Enterprise’ at ₹2,400, and ‘Ultimate’ at ₹2,600. On offer is also a free-tier for up to three users with limited features.

There are also standalone enterprise apps on offer—Zoho Books, Zoho Billing, Zoho People, Zoho Projects, Zoho Creator, etc.

And while its employee and marketing expenses rose sharply in FY23—up 49% and 89% respectively—Zoho maintained one of the healthiest profit profiles in the global SaaS industry.

The company employs more than 15,000 people worldwide, with over 100 million users across its apps.

On Wednesday, Home Minister Amit Shah switched his official email ID to Zoho Mail, moving away from global providers like Google and Microsoft.

The Ministry of Education has started using Zoho Office Suite for internal documentation as part of a push for data sovereignty and reduced foreign software dependence.

Zoho, capitalising on the moment, has launched ad campaigns proudly declaring its “desi roots” and technological independence.

Zoho emphasises that Indian user data is hosted in domestic data centres (Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai), and that they do not rely on AWS/Azure for core workloads.

Arattai (Tamil for “chat”), Zoho's answer to WhatsApp launched in 2021, has seen a 100-times surge in downloads after government endorsements and social media attention. Zoho has since fast-tracked end-to-end encryption for the app to position it as a privacy-first, Indian alternative to WhatsApp.

Zoho is also gearing up to challenge Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 directly with a new productivity and collaboration suite called Vani. The platform integrates document creation, video meetings, and AI-assisted workflows under one interface.

Vani is perhaps Zoho’s most ambitious consumer play yet, aimed squarely at large organisations looking to replace foreign productivity tools with Indian alternatives.

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Still, what makes Zoho stand out is its knack for balancing profitability with sovereignty. It has chosen not to chase valuations unlike many of its peers. That business model of sure-and-steady growth has precedence too, in the likes of Zerodha and Fractal AI, until they broke onto the scene and owned their space.