I wrote last Monday that the Truly Zoho event in Chennai promised to raise the bar for analyst summits. I grossly miscalculated. It blew the roof off!!
I posted recaps and lots of photos each night on LinkedIn. The 3 days in Chennai focused on Operations, People and Growth. The visit to Tenkasi focused on CEO Sridhar Vembu’s passion for rural revival. Here are excerpts from the Growth day and Tenkasi
Growth Day
We heard about business in places like Nigeria, Middle East and Brazil we hardly hear other vendors mention
We visited with couple of their startup investments in autonomous, electric utility vehicles (couple of us test drove one) and med tech.
We heard from customers who are using their platform in creative ways.
We heard from senior product executives how they prioritize a massively growing product feature set.
All invited analysts were peppered with questions from a Zoho in-person and from a virtual audience on how they can continue to do better. It is so rare to have vendors ask analysts for input. It’s what I call the difference between using analysts for intelligence v influence
Tenkasi
I have heard Sridhar talk about his passion for rural renewal. We got to experience it first hand.
We flew in an Indigo commuter flight to tiny Tuticorin airport and drove past miles and miles of wind farms. Sridhar gave a few of us a ride in his electric tuktuk. But this was not about rural India turning green. There is about a more urgent, desperate need which drives him
Farming is a critical occupation which unfortunately generates fickle income. In India and elsewhere farming is afflicted by alcoholism and suicides with the despair of a career which is so dependent on weather and government policies. And frankly a lack of respect from so many of us in white collar world.
With his organic farms, his schools, his investment in telco and physical infrastructure, the healthcare and tourism Sridhar has an expansive vision for rural renewal
We saw it in the gratitude of young girls who did traditional dances for the audience and talked about going to Zoho computer science and other schools being set up in Tenkasi. We saw it in the passion of young boys who are already writing code and creating new games and apps. We saw it in the teachers, architects and others who are changing careers and helping Sridhar full time away from the big city. We saw it in the gratitude of random village folk who stopped to thank Sridhar. Many analysts got into the spirit and donned saris and muthus.
Lots of tech companies virtue signal about a number of societal initiatives. Very few put in as much effort as Sridhar is doing.
My wife Margaret was honored to be allowed to join us for the day. One of the more intense experiences from so many we have had over the last couple of weeks Margaret and I have been in India.
So, how was this different?
Vendors have become creative with analyst get-togethers since Workday pioneered the analyst summit in 2010. Plex used to combine them with customer plant visits. Workfront combined one with a customer advisory board.
Zoho brought so many things together: A visit to their growing Chennai campus which will provide workspace, meals, relaxation and easy to access healthcare (critical in a clogged city like Chennai) to 15,000 professionals. A prototype of how future growth will be handled in secondary and tertiary locations like Tenkasi. A glimpse into their computer science, design and others schools. Introduction to some of their startup investments.
What was different? Very few slides. Lots of conversations, walkabouts. live demos, open q&a and unfettered access to execs and customers. Clearly, I don’t expect they will repeat this every year but they have provided a template for other vendors for a periodic “mega event”
I am planning a series of video episodes involving Zoho folks talking about the unbelievably complex planning for the event. one with customer execs who were part of the event, and one with a couple of the analysts.
You will get a 360 degree perspective. Believe me it will not come remotely close to the full immersion experience we have just been through.
