Table of Contents
Zoho Corporation-success-story- Bio, facts, Net worth, Owner Information, Income, How they start-up, Rating, Reviews, Journey, Growth.
From his days as an ordinary employee to his rise to prominence as one of India's most prosperous social entrepreneurs, Sridhar Vembu's entire life is an inspiration. He started a profitable company from the ground up without any outside funding. He persisted with his bootstrapping approach, and recently Zoho achieved unicorn status with a $1 billion valuation.
Some highlights of his life:
Sridhar Vembu, a citizen of India, was born in Tanjore, Tamil Nadu in 1968. He holds dual roles as CEO and co-founder of the recently over $1 billion audited Zoho Corporation.
India's fourth-highest civilian award, the Padma Shri, was given to him in 2021. Sridhar was raised in an upper-class family. He has had an incredible journey because he has reached such heights while staying firmly grounded. He embodies the perfect example of a constructive member of society and is a great patriot.
After completing his primary education in Tamil, Vembu showed exceptional talent as a student. His electrical engineering bachelor's degree from IIT Madras was awarded to him in 1989.
About his Success Life:
With its headquarters located in India, Zoho Corporation is a worldwide technology firm that creates web-based business tools and computer software. Tony Thomas and Sridhar Vembu founded it in 1996. It is best known for its online office suite, Zoho Office bundle. At the moment, it operates offices all around the globe. Its global headquarters is situated in Chennai, India, and it operates globally, with its main office situated in Austin, Texas. Radha Vembu, Sridhar Vembu's sister, owns the majority of the business, and Zoho presently offers over 55 software products. Zoho's tagline is "Made in India." made with the global community in mind.
Sridhar Vembu established Zoho with his two brothers, Kumar and Sekhar Vembu, and Tony Thomas. Tony was introduced to Sridhar’s brothers, who worked from Chennai, and it was through their collaboration that the SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol) protocol software was created. Tony was the company’s first CEO and Sridhar Vembu—was largely a supporting character in the narrative until he left in 1996 after working for Qualcomm in California as a wireless engineer.
An application-layer protocol called Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) is used to monitor and control network devices on a local area network (LAN) or wide area network (WAN).
- Tony requested Sridhar to accompany him as he attempted to market this software to the trade exhibition in Las Vegas, but neither of them had any experience in sales. So, after printing several business cards and attending the event, Sridhar decided to give it a try. Thanks to his rusty sales abilities, he was able to close some deals for them, making him the show’s first salesperson.
- Formerly called Advent Network Management Inc., Zoho is a company that offers network management solutions. When it became difficult for Zoho to onboard staff from Ivy League universities in the beginning, Sridhar decided to hire a few young engineers from elite universities and to give the staff members who were amateurs and college dropouts extra training to become proficient programmers and coders.
- They surpassed $350K in sales by the end of 1997, but the management decided to reinvest all of the money they made back into developing Web NMS, which became their first product, rather than paying themselves. When their sales surpassed $1 million in 1998, they started to pay themselves. In 2000, their revenue topped $10 million. Thomas stepped down as CEO in favor of Sridhar Vembu, who took over the company’s rapid expansion and was subsequently named CEO.
- It had a potential investor in 2000 who was prepared to invest millions of dollars in the company, but Sridhar turned it down. As a result, he is renowned for turning down venture capital financing and serves as an example for all entrepreneurs hoping to create profitable, bootstrapped enterprises. On the eve of India’s 72nd Republic Day (2021), Sridhar Vembu was bestowed with the esteemed Padma Shri award very recently.
- They had increased its activities in Japan and refocused on small and medium-sized enterprises by June 2001, but the company suffered greatly as a result of the dot-com bust that year. Even though AdventNet’s customer base had drastically decreased by 2002, the company was still able to weather the storm without the need for assistance. Following this, a new issue arose, and their WebNMS product approached market saturation. At this point, they realized it was time to make a change, but this time they knew how to develop the product and promote it.
- To help businesses manage all IT processes, they began developing Manage Engine, which they introduced in 2003. Of the organizations that used Manage Engine at the time, 60% had a name on the Fortune 500 list.
- Due to decreased demand and venture capital funding limits, the dot-com bubble burst was a shock that caused large stock sell-offs. This accelerated the rate of the market decline.
- Following the Manage engine’s success in 2005, they expanded to include Zoho Corp., and since they were better at creating products, they introduced Zoho Writer, Zoho Sheets, and Zoho Docs. However, Google also entered the market in 2005 with Google Docs and Sheets, and they realized it would be difficult to compete with Google, so they changed their focus and launched Zoho CRM. Additionally, they founded Zoho Schools in 2005, where they paid students to study instead of charging them for instruction. To date, over 1400 students have graduated from Zoho Schools.
- Since AdventNet used to target home offices and small offices, they planned to maintain the domain name “SOHO” to construct Soho.com. However, that domain name was used, so they ultimately opted to name it Zoho, which is how they were named. Additionally, they separated the effort into three departments: Manage Engine, WebNMS, and Zoho University.
- In 2015, they expanded their business to include over 25 goods. Presently, they employ over 12,000 people, serve over 150 countries, and have over 80 million consumers across 55+ products.
Right now, in practically every industry, including sales, finance, marketing, communication, human resources, etc., Zoho provides more than 55 products.
Here are some of Zoho's popular products:
Zoho CRM: It is an award-winning CRM that is used by over 2,50,000 organizations in 180 nations to convert more leads, engage customers, and generate revenue. Zoho CRM provides a single repository for your Sales, Marketing, and Customer Support Operations, as well as a platform for optimizing your 3 p’s- Processes, Policies, and People.
Zoho Sales IQ: This platform leverages data from customer behavior analysis to enhance marketing and sales initiatives. It is an excellent live chat support and website tracking application that tracks traffic in real-time. It also makes it possible for businesses to respond to customer inquiries promptly, which raises lead conversion rates. It can show a variety of data, such as the location of the customer, how often they visit, and how they behave on the website.
Other tools for sales include Thrive, Bigin, and Zoho Forms.
A smart social media management application called Zoho Social was created to help businesses take advantage of social networks. Through its ability to help businesses connect with the proper audience and build a stronger online presence, this platform helps expedite business development. With the aid of Zoho Social, multiple-channel marketing is possible.
Additional options for marketing include Zoho campaigns, surveys, and backstage features.
Zoho Books:
This online accounting solution may be used to manage the financial elements of any kind of business. With ease, it can handle finances, inventories, bills, invoicing, and even mobile bookkeeping. With the help of this intuitive accounting software—which is compatible with all devices and operating systems and is accessible in over ten languages—small business owners can better manage their finances. Japanese, German, and English are among these languages.
Other tools in the finance domain include Zoho Payroll, Expenses, Invoices, and so on.
Designed for startups and small and medium-sized businesses, Zoho Recruit is a top applicant tracking system and recruitment management platform. It is a multi-awarded solution, primarily because of its easy-to-use dashboard and extensive customizable functionalities. With this tool, you can post job openings with ease and streamline your hiring process. You can publish it with just one click on job boards and in your career portal.
With the help of this cloud-based HR software, you can precisely measure your work hours, attendance, and time spent creating timesheets. It records your leaves as well. Its goal is to support workers while facilitating efficient and flexible HR administration.
Other Zoho applications for HR include Zoho Workerly, Zoho Shifs, and so forth.
