Chennai-headquartered Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) giant Zoho Corp completed 25 years on Tuesday and announced that it would be opening satellite offices, which are 20-30 seaters in rural and non-urban areas across the country.
The company is also looking to follow a hub-and-spoke office model, and move towards a decentralised and distributed workforce. “In such a remote and hybrid work model, every business app becomes a collaboration app. The company will, therefore, invest in messaging and A/V technologies,” it announced.
The company said it will undertake infrastructure projects in villages where it has opened offices, and invest in long-term research and development (R&D) projects aimed at building capabilities and know-how.
Zoho’s co-founder Sridhar Vembu, who moved to Mathalamparai, a village in Tenkasi in Tamil Nadu in late 2019, has been working on an experiment where engineers from 10 villages — around 200 engineers — work closer to their homes by working for the company from these satellite offices.
He has also been teaching children in his village and from educating children in his spare time, the experiment has grown in size. Zoho said it will now expand and develop its school in Tenkasi to educate local children in their local language and contribute to serving local communities through various initiatives. It announced that similar projects will be undertaken in other rural and non-urban areas.
Zoho currently offers services across the world under three brands — IoT platform under WebNMS, enterprise IT management under ManageEngine and cloud platform and applications under Zoho.
“Our purpose has been to create opportunities for those who don't have them, build compelling products for our customers, and serve geographical locations that have not been served before. We want to continue being a catalyst for change, inspiring others and emerging as a top technology leader, all the while serving those whom we impact more broadly and deeply,” Vembu said on the occasion of the company’s 25th anniversary.
For the opening of satellite offices, Zoho said it aims to “support regional economies to become self-reliant through opening offices in rural or non-urban areas, local hiring, partnerships, investments, and adopting the local culture”.
In the coming years, Zoho expects the value of tighter vertical, horizontal and contextual workflow integrations to grow, leading to better efficiency for its customers. Zoho says that it will continue to invest in R&D efforts to achieve the same.
Zoho, which was started in 1996, continues to be privately held and has over 9,000 employees.
It is headquartered in Austin, USA and has its international headquarters in Chennai, along with offices in the USA, India, Japan, China, Singapore, Mexico, Australia, the Netherlands, and the United Arab Emirates.