What is Zoho? Indian productivity platform Ashwini Vaishnaw now uses instead of Microsoft and Google

Union Minister Ashwinin Vaishnaw has posted about switching to Zoho for accessing documents, spreadsheets and presenatations in a bid to promote the use of Indian made products. Microsoft’s Office suite is often used as a top paid tool for these tools while Google also offers similar tools online.

“I am moving to Zoho — our own Swadeshi platform for documents, spreadsheets & presentations. 🇮🇳 I urge all to join PM Shri @narendramodi Ji’s call for Swadeshi by adopting indigenous products & services.” wrote Vaishnaw in a post on X (formerly Twitter).

What is Zoho?

Founded in 1996 by Sridhar Vembu and Tony Thomas, Zoho Corporation is a software-as-a-service (SaaS) company headquartered in Chennai. It offers more than 55 cloud-based tools for businesses, covering email, accounting, HR, project management, CRM and more.

While being incorporated in the US, Zoho continues to have a strong “Made in India” ethos and runs its major operations from rural Tamil Nadu. The company has over 100 million users across 150+ countries, with clients ranging from startups to even Fortune 500 firms.

Zoho also offers a number of productivity tools which are bundled under its Zoho Workplace and Zoho Office Suite packages. Many of these tools are also available as standalone applications and compete directly with the likes Microsoft Office 365 and Google Workspace.

Among the popular Zoho productivity apps include Zoho Writer,Zoho Sheet, Zoho Show, Zoho Notebook, Zoho WorkDrive, Zoho Mail, Zoho Meeting and Zoho Calendar.

Zoho looks to differentiate itself by keeping user data private since its doesn’t rely on ad revenue. The company hosts its data in multiple geographies in order to meet with the regulatory requirements. Moreover, Zoho Workspace is generally cheaper than the plans for Microsoft and Google which has led to the company having a large prescence in India especially among the small and medium businesses.