A technology startup called Zoho has disclosed a Dhs100 million investment for UAE expansion.
The CEO and co-founder of Zoho, Sridhar Vembu, made this announcement on the sidelines of Zoholics Dubai, the company's annual user conference. In the five years since the company began operating in the UAE, which serves as its Middle East and Africa headquarters, the company has grown ten times in the nation, with a 5-year CAGR of 60%.
The UAE, the nation with the second-highest growth rate in the world, saw a growth of 45% for Zoho in 2022. In the past year, company has also more than doubled both its national and MEA-wide personnel base. In contrast, in 2022, the country's partner network expanded by 50%.
“As part of our transnational localism strategy, when we expand into a region, we want to give back to the local community and be rooted in the local culture as we grow,” said Vembu. “Over the past five years, we have invested in local hiring, growing our partner network, adding Arabic support in our products, and integrating with local payment gateways to adapt our solutions for the local market. We will continue to invest in growing our footprints in the country through hirings, upskilling programmes, localisation of products, integrating our solutions with local vendors, and partnering with organisations to help local businesses in their digitalisation efforts.”
To make enterprise technology accessible to enterprises, Zoho has partnered with a number of organisations, including the Department of Economy and Tourism (DET) and Dubai Culture. In order to provide upskilling courses, it has also worked with educational institutions including the Emirates Academy of Hospitality Management (EAHM) and the Manipal Academy of Higher Education (MAHE).
Since 2020, Zoho has invested Dhs20m in wallet credits to help over 3500 SMEs access its cloud technologies through a variety of agreements. Additionally, it spent Dhs4.5 million on upskilling programmes to teach digital literacy to more than 300 businesses and 200 students.
“Because of the global economic conditions, more and more companies are moving towards digitalisation and choosing unified platforms that help them break data silos and bring forth contextual real-time insights that enable them to make quick decisions and be nimble to adapt to changing market conditions. We offer a unified platform for all business needs, from customer experience and marketing to finance and enterprise collaboration, with our apps being customisable, integrable and extendible. This makes Zoho an ideal choice for businesses of all sizes,” added Vembu.