"After 3-4 months , I had nothing to show for my sales effort and I ran out of money" - ZOHO Brothers
It was October , 1995 . Sridhar Vembu had completed his PhD at Princeton University , US , a year ago and was involved in wireless research at Qualcomm in San Diego . His younger brother Kumar was also a software engineer at Qualcomm , a promising startup at the time . The youngest of the three brothers , Sekar , had just arrived in the US for a PhD at Rochester University in New York.
It was then that Kumar suddenly decided to quit his job and head back to India to create a company.
Sekar also quit his PhD and accompanied his brother back to India to help . "We used to have these startup discussions at the dinner table and one morning Kumar just took the decision to move to India ," says Sridhar . "He was also feeling very homesick . And they had no clear idea what they were going to do."
The Vembu brothers had little idea then , but in these moves lay the beginnings of ZOHO Corp , which today employs close to 1,300 people with offices in Chennai , US , Europe , Japan and China , and the main development centre in Chennai . Its online suite of productivity and collaboration tools called ZOHO.com competes with Microsoft's and Google's offerings in the space , including word processor , spreadsheet , presentation , as also Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tools, where it competes with Salesforce .com . The suite has over 3 million users around the world . ZOHO also has a tool for IT administrators to manage networks , called ManageE ngine . This has over 40,000 customers , including 60 % of the Fortune 500 companies , and is the company's biggest revenue earner.
Kumar and Sekar set up their first office in their father 's home in Chennai with two computers , and called it Vembu Systems . Sekar , a BTech from IIT Madras , got his IIT friend Shailesh Kumar to join the startup . In the US , Sridhar put all his belongings in a car and drove to Silicon Valley to drum up business for the startup.
"After 3-4 months , I had nothing to show for my sales effort and I ran out of money ," says Sridhar.
But he quickly recovered from that to set up a network management product company that did very well till the tech bubble burst in 2001. Later , Sridhar , together with Shailesh , reinvented that business , which became Zoho.
"We have been really good at riding technology waves ," says Shailesh . "First was the Java wave and then we saw cloud computing coming . Combining that with our new strategy of getting close to end users , we ended up with ZOHO." The ZOHO Office suite was launched in 2006 , at a time when cloud computing was barely heard of. Cloud computing refers to the access of software applications over the internet , instead of from your PC's hard disk.
Sridhar and Shailesh also started a unique initiative called ZOHO University that takes in 12th standard and polytechnic students , trains them for 18 months in English , mathematics and computer science , and depending on performance , absorbs them into the company . "It gives an opportunity to students living in interior parts of India who otherwise wouldn't have been able to pursue such education . It is also good for us as they are more dedicated and loyal ," says Shailesh . 120 students have so far passed out of it and comprise about 10% of ZOHO's workforce today . The goal is to take it to 30-40 %.
The strategy is working well. ZOHO's clients include such names as Coca-Cola , Nortel , Motorola , Deutsche Bank and Cisco. But the focus is on smaller enterprises for whom cloud offerings are cheaper , since it obviates investment in hardware , software licenses and IT infrastructure management .
ZOHO may not have the marketing budget of a Google , but it's hoping its products will continue speaking for themselves .
"We have started moving some of the ManageE ngine products to the cloud and are bringing in regular improvements in all our services . We intend to make the most of the cloud," says Shailesh.
Read more: Zoho brothers on cloud 9 - The Times of India http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/business/india-business/Zoho-brothers-on-cloud-9/articleshow/7264718.cms#ixzz1AoWGlz4o
It was then that Kumar suddenly decided to quit his job and head back to India to create a company.
Sekar also quit his PhD and accompanied his brother back to India to help . "We used to have these startup discussions at the dinner table and one morning Kumar just took the decision to move to India ," says Sridhar . "He was also feeling very homesick . And they had no clear idea what they were going to do."
The Vembu brothers had little idea then , but in these moves lay the beginnings of ZOHO Corp , which today employs close to 1,300 people with offices in Chennai , US , Europe , Japan and China , and the main development centre in Chennai . Its online suite of productivity and collaboration tools called ZOHO.com competes with Microsoft's and Google's offerings in the space , including word processor , spreadsheet , presentation , as also Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tools, where it competes with Salesforce .com . The suite has over 3 million users around the world . ZOHO also has a tool for IT administrators to manage networks , called ManageE ngine . This has over 40,000 customers , including 60 % of the Fortune 500 companies , and is the company's biggest revenue earner.
Kumar and Sekar set up their first office in their father 's home in Chennai with two computers , and called it Vembu Systems . Sekar , a BTech from IIT Madras , got his IIT friend Shailesh Kumar to join the startup . In the US , Sridhar put all his belongings in a car and drove to Silicon Valley to drum up business for the startup.
"After 3-4 months , I had nothing to show for my sales effort and I ran out of money ," says Sridhar.
But he quickly recovered from that to set up a network management product company that did very well till the tech bubble burst in 2001. Later , Sridhar , together with Shailesh , reinvented that business , which became Zoho.
"We have been really good at riding technology waves ," says Shailesh . "First was the Java wave and then we saw cloud computing coming . Combining that with our new strategy of getting close to end users , we ended up with ZOHO." The ZOHO Office suite was launched in 2006 , at a time when cloud computing was barely heard of. Cloud computing refers to the access of software applications over the internet , instead of from your PC's hard disk.
Sridhar and Shailesh also started a unique initiative called ZOHO University that takes in 12th standard and polytechnic students , trains them for 18 months in English , mathematics and computer science , and depending on performance , absorbs them into the company . "It gives an opportunity to students living in interior parts of India who otherwise wouldn't have been able to pursue such education . It is also good for us as they are more dedicated and loyal ," says Shailesh . 120 students have so far passed out of it and comprise about 10% of ZOHO's workforce today . The goal is to take it to 30-40 %.
The strategy is working well. ZOHO's clients include such names as Coca-Cola , Nortel , Motorola , Deutsche Bank and Cisco. But the focus is on smaller enterprises for whom cloud offerings are cheaper , since it obviates investment in hardware , software licenses and IT infrastructure management .
ZOHO may not have the marketing budget of a Google , but it's hoping its products will continue speaking for themselves .
"We have started moving some of the ManageE ngine products to the cloud and are bringing in regular improvements in all our services . We intend to make the most of the cloud," says Shailesh.
Read more: Zoho brothers on cloud 9 - The Times of India http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/business/india-business/Zoho-brothers-on-cloud-9/articleshow/7264718.cms#ixzz1AoWGlz4o
Comments
Post a Comment