In this 99th episode (and 98th yesterday) of Burning Platform, we host 3 Zoho global executives: Carla Garcia, Head of Latin America; Suvish Viswanathan. Head of Marketing for UK and EU and Ali Shabdar, Regional Director of MEA.
Zoho announced yesterday they have reached the impressive 100 million user milestone (from just 1 million 15 years ago)
CEO Sridhar Vembu, in an interview, said
“We have an impressive innovation pipeline covering the next 10 years and are investing in deep technologies to serve billions of users around the world…”
The conversation with the 3 executives brings out how Zoho’s unique approach to globalization – what they call “transnational localism” - has accelerated growth in the last few years and will be critical to reach the billion user milestone.
In the first episode yesterday, they talked about how they target across the 150+ countries in their 3 focus regions. Ali mentioned Bahrain, Israel, Jordan, Kenya, Nigeria, S, Africa, Saudi Arabia and UAE in his comments. Suvish mentioned developed economies in Europe and also emerging demand in Southern and Eastern Europe. Carla described how Zoholics events help in a culture where customers prioritize face to face interaction, and how Zoho is unafraid to leverage billboard and other analog marketing channels.
In episode two today we drill into 6 additional topics
- How they prioritize localization for so many countries (language, currencies, unique laws and business practices)
- Liaison and collaboration with host governments and commitment to their digitalization journey
- How they customize economics and licensing to many local demands
- Relationship with hyperscalers like Microsoft, Google and AWS which are shaping DevOps around the globe
- How their regions are reacting to the GenAI phenomenon
- How CIOs in their region are adopting low and no code tools to build v buy applications
Worth watching both episodes – they cover so much ground. In a recent post I wrote there is a lot of glib talk about the collapse of globalization. I maintain we are going through a re-globalization. This episode captures Zoho’s unique approach to this new world.
