Zoho replicating satellite office model worldwide
Opening rural offices across India as well as in Texas, Mexico, and two locations in the European Union
Hyderabad: Zoho Corp has been opening satellite offices in villages and non-urban centres over the past year as a part of its rural revival initiative. The company opened its first village office in Tenkasi (Tamil Nadu) back in 2011 with the belief that software can be built from anywhere. It plans to replicate the model in Telangana and other parts of India, besides global locations.
Early this year, Zoho commissioned Economix Consulting Group (ECG) to study the socio-economic impact of its presence in Tenkasi, where it employs over 500 people. The study revealed several areas of positive impact such as rise in overall income, women empowerment, rise in education and skill-building, increase in employment, and community development. The findings proved that the rural offices are a successful model, and the company is keen to emulate the same across the country and globally.
Praval Singh, VP, Marketing and Customer Experience, Zoho Corp, told Telangana Today, “After seeing success in the Tenkasi model, we have created over 20 satellite offices in southern India and intend to take it pan-India and globally. We will create a hub and spoke network with a central office collaborating with the satellite offices.”
“We have recently partnered with Jagriti, a non-profit organisation, to set up a Digital Centre of Excellence at its upcoming campus at Deoria, Uttar Pradesh, to incubate 3,500 local SMEs, and provide technology to 20,000 other businesses. We are also opening rural offices in Texas, Mexico, and in two places in the European Union. We already have a rural office in Japan,” Singh said.
Helping businesses
He further added, “Seeing the impact Covid made on businesses, we came out with certain initiatives to help the entrepreneurs, government institutions and the NGOs. One of the initiatives launched last year is called ‘Swadeshi Sankalp’, where we offered our software and solutions to organisations to navigate through the crisis. We also waived off subscription charges to businesses for certain products for about three months. We also helped the government healthcare institutions by creating platforms to customise solutions for them.”
The company through Zoho Workplace suite and Zoho Connect app helped companies to enable seamless communication and connectivity, when organisations shifted to large scale remote working. “The company also made a soft launch of a P2P (peer-to-peer) chat tool a few months ago, a consumer-centric messaging solution, which saw a lot of traction. We will go for a commercial launch soon,” Singh informed.
During the pandemic, large businesses engaged with Zoho for value and cost optimisation, while the small and medium businesses looked for value-added digital tools and solutions to collaborate remotely. The company today offers a suite of over 45 apps, bringing an array of productivity and collaboration tools for businesses. The 8,000-employee company has been constantly investing in scalability.
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