Craftsmanship, as good as it gets
We see creating great software that delivers high value as a craft, akin to a work of art. You chip away at what's not working, sharpen your skills year after year, and return to refine your product from the very core. While the components might be high-tech, the process used to create them is the same as that of any artisan: tireless effort, countless iteration, and patient refinement.
Privately held, profitable, and proud to be
We've been around for a quarter of a century, and plan to be around a whole lot longer.
Our decision not to take venture capital, not to go for an IPO, and not to be acquired has given us immense freedom—the freedom to innovate, to learn from our mistakes, and to challenge conventional wisdom. We've put in the time and hard work to build our software portfolio from scratch, rather than acquiring the work of others.
An innovation-first company
This confidence comes from the wisdom we learned during times when we had no choice but to reinvent, all while tapping into new market opportunities.
We haven't earned the goodwill of customers and analysts alike by building great software alone, but by demonstrating our commitment to ceaseless innovation.
A holistic approach toward employees
We think beyond the system of credentialism. That hiring policy and the goal of creating more jobs in rural communities, by itself, contributes to keeping our culture vital.
We've had programmers move to creative design, content writers switch to customer support, and copy editors transition into human resource roles. We do not believe that prior experience in one field should preclude pursuing another. Our employees, who’ve stayed with us for more than a decade, have spoken in great detail about such experiences in Humans of Zoho.
Our journey through the years
Creating stellar products for our users comes first. In the long run, it's not the big wins that matter, but the little ones, and the determination to keep trying. And that's what we do every day: continually put new things on the market and demonstrate the value of our products.
What lies ahead
We've come a long way, but there's more work to be done. We've undertaken a host of new initiatives that will improve your business while also improving the communities where we live.
- Bringing opportunity back to smaller communities
- Strengthening our commitment to data protection and security
- Building full-stack expertise and increasing investments in R&D
- Challenging conventional hiring expectations
- Achieving carbon neutrality
Bringing opportunity back to smaller communities
A keystone of our philosophy is in seeing value in the overlooked. Small, often rural communities, hold immense talent, but lack viable employment options; we want to change that.
We have drifted away from the "mega-office" model and are now opening smaller offices. If we can bring high-tech jobs to places where there are none, we can also help stimulate local economic revitalization.
Recent events have shown us the value of more tightly knit remote-working environments. We have made great advances in this space.
Strengthening our commitment to data protection and security
In 29+ years of being in business, we've been mindful of our users' privacy from the very start. Long before GDPR came into effect, the tenets of data privacy were woven into our corporate tapestry. We are fanatical about data privacy, and about giving you more control rather than less. It's why we extended GDPR protections to customers around the world. Your right to control your data shouldn't be dictated by the lines on a map.
Moreover, we've never sold customer data or made a single penny from showing third-party ads inside our products—and we never will. We've also removed all trackers that ship data to third parties from our websites. Your business should be your own, no one else's.
Building full-stack expertise and increasing investments in R&D
We're not here to use your money to improve our up-selling skills. Instead, we spend twice as much on R&D as on sales and marketing, to come up with new solutions and address your pain points.
Instead of relying on public clouds, we direct our resources towards running our own data centers. We're also investing in areas such as AI, ML, NLP, and IoT, as well as hardware like servers, networks, and storage spaces.
You can already see the impacts of these investments in the expansion of Zia (our AI-powered assistant), faster upload/download speeds to our data centers, and more robust network connections, just to name a few. These investments in R&D speak to our commitment to the long term. We have a lot more planned.
Challenging conventional hiring expectations
Disillusioned by the ever-widening gap between industry expectations and graduating talent, we started an experiment in 2005 to provide a meaningful alternative to conventional college education.
We offer highly relevant, deeply contextual, and truly experiential training to students for a two-year period. Nearly 15% of our employee base now comes from Zoho Schools.
Encouraged by the great results we have seen in the 20 years since its inception, we are set to spread our wings and expand. More students, new disciplines, and international branches are all underway.
Achieving carbon neutrality
Our solar ambitions soar high. In an effort to minimize our carbon footprint, we've set up a 5 MW solar energy farm to power our offices and data centers in India. We're now saving nearly 7,200 tons of carbon dioxide emissions per year, the equivalent of planting 14,400 trees.
Sustainability cannot be a one-off initiative, and with this model working well, we are looking at more such locations, and plan to continue to do this.
We're excited to see the rapidly falling cost of electricity from solar, and how it can allow India to industrialize without building more coal-fired power plants.
Customers and analysts chime in
We couldn’t have come this far without the support of our customers and partners. It’s a long road ahead, but we’re optimistic about transforming the future of work for businesses across nations.
"To be successful as a technology company, you’ve got to be able to stand apart from the crowd. You can’t be innovative unless you challenge the mainstream. And Zoho has certainly done that."
Business Software. Our Craft. Our Passion.
