Zoho Unveils Vikra and Zoho IoT, Reports 31% Customer Growth in India

Zoho Records 31% Customer Growth in India, Unveils Vikra and Zoho IoT at Zoholics India 2024

Zoho, launched Vikra, a seller app on the Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC) network and Zoho IoT, a user-friendly and scalable low-code platform enabling businesses to build and deploy custom IoT (Internet of Things) solutions. The company also said that it saw a customer growth of 31% in 2023 in India. The announcements were made on the sidelines of Zoholics India, the company's annual user conference. "We remain steadfast in our product R&D efforts, with a focus on effectively enhancing our platform through innovating and launching new products like Vikra and Zoho IoT while also integrating AI capabilities across the tech stack. We have steadily advanced on our contextual intelligence vision, applying AI technology to enhance customer experience and offer deeper insights. This commitment to continuous improvement is helping us become a preferred partner for large enterprises and government institutions across India. As businesses increasingly seek value from their software solutions and larger organisations aim to reduce bloat, we're seeing significant growth in India, which has now become our second-largest market said," Sridhar Vembu, CEO and Co-founder, Zoho Corp.

Zoho announces 31% customer growth in India, launches Vikra and Zoho IoT at Zoholics India

Zoho, the Chennai-headquartered global technology company, today launched Vikra, a seller app on the Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC) network and Zoho IoT, a user-friendly and scalable low-code platform enabling businesses to build and deploy custom IoT (Internet of Things) solutions. The company also said that it saw a customer growth of 31% in 2023 in India. The announcements were made on the sidelines of Zoholics India, the company's annual user conference. "We remain steadfast in our product R&D efforts, with a focus on effectively enhancing our platform through innovating and launching new products like Vikra and Zoho IoT while also integrating AI capabilities across the tech stack. We have steadily advanced on our contextual intelligence vision, applying AI technology to enhance customer experience and offer deeper insights. This commitment to continuous improvement is helping us become a preferred partner for large enterprises and government institutions across India. As businesses increasingly seek value from their software solutions and larger organisations aim to reduce bloat, we're seeing significant growth in India, which has now become our second-largest market," said Sridhar Vembu, CEO and Co-founder, Zoho Corp. Vikra: A seller application on the ONDC network E-commerce has immense potential to empower MSMEs in the country, yet, they make for just 7% of the overall retail market. This significant gap is mainly due to smaller businesses struggling with complexities in the use of technology, and facing various challenges in operating on marketplace platforms, including heavy commission fees. To address this, Zoho has launched Vikra, a seller app on the ONDC network that enables frictionless commerce across India. Vikra is designed to function as the crucial bridge connecting businesses to the vast expanse of India's market through the ONDC network. This initiative not only aligns with Zoho's tradition of empowering businesses but also enhances their reach, making market accessibility frictionless. Businesses using the app can get onboarded to the ONDC network easily, set up stores, create product catalogues, and start selling quickly through popular buyer apps like Paytm, Ola, and Snapdeal. They can also receive instant order notifications on WhatsApp and SMS for speedy fulfilment. They have options to self-deliver or deliver via partners like Delhivery on the ONDC network locally and nationally. Vikra also offers personalised support for onboarding, cataloguing, managing operations, reconciling payment settlement from the ONDC network, and resolving customer disputes. Built on Zoho's finance and operations platform, Vikra enables seamless interoperability with other applications such as Zoho Books, Zoho Inventory and Zoho Commerce. This allows businesses to manage their finances, handle taxes, streamline their inventory operations, and build an e-commerce store. Vikra is an end-to-end solution for businesses of any size, simplifying their e-commerce journey, and helping them become more visible in the market with significantly less investment and effort. T Koshy, MD & CEO of ONDC, said, "Vikra represents the kind of innovation that supports ONDC's mission to make e-commerce accessible to all. By integrating such advanced solutions from Zoho, we are not just simplifying technology for businesses, we are also opening doors to a vast, inclusive digital economy. This is a step forward in democratizing e-commerce in India, where even the smallest businesses can now thrive in the digital marketplace harnessing the power of Technology." Zoho IoT: A customisable low-code IoT platform with pre-built vertical solutions Zoho IoT seamlessly collects and manages IoT device data in real time, offering businesses insights and streamlined operational analysis. Its intuitive features empower organisations to automate processes and make data-driven decisions effortlessly, without the need for extensive technical expertise. The platform's AI capabilities transform data into actionable insights, predict system outages, identify anomalies or forecast trends, optimize operations, and enhance customer experiences. Zoho IoT integrates with Zoho's existing suite of applications, providing enhanced visibility and control. Its compatibility with third-party hardware allows for quick integration into existing infrastructures, enabling businesses to scale rapidly as they grow. The platform is built with robust security measures, ensuring data privacy and compliance with global standards. Zoho IoT offers pre-built solutions for different industries, such as Industrial IoT (users can track and manage shop floor productivity and machine uptime, while reducing maintenance and repairs of high capital assets), Smart Buildings (provides users a unified system to manage and monitor assets, tenants, energy, and facilities), Energy Management (users can control energy usage by monitoring consumption patterns and enabling efficiency measures). The platform also offers end-to-end capabilities and integrations with offerings like Point Solutions (for remote management and control, enabling operational visibility and allowing businesses to solve specific challenges such as gas monitoring, water leakage monitoring, and indoor air quality management) and Connected OEMs (businesses can boost efficiency, enable real-time data insights and remote monitoring with smart products and connected OEMs, providing it as a value-added service). Zoho's growth in India Zoho's growth has been led by demand for unified, scalable, and flexible technology solutions that are easy to implement. The top products driving revenue growth in India are Zoho One, Zoho CRM, Zoho Books, and Zoho People. While in terms of customer growth, Zoho Books and Zoho Workplace are the fastest growing products. The sectors leading the growth are IT hardware and related services, financial services, manufacturing, retail, and non-IT professional services. Furthermore, Zoho is enhancing its AI capabilities by building and deploying multiple language models -- narrow, small, medium, and large -- for specific use cases within various products. Zoho's approach towards AI is to help enterprises gather actionable insights to make decisions by adding the critical element -- business context. The company also has a strong privacy focus, ensuring that the AI models are not trained on consumer data. Disclaimer: All trademarks, product names, and company names cited herein are the property of their respective owners. Pricing and Availability: Vikra is available for immediate use. As an introductory offer, a seller app fee of 1% of the total transaction amount on every sale will be charged. For more information, please visit: https://www.vikraseller.com/en-in/seller/pricing Zoho IoT offers flexible, pay-as-you-grow plans -- ranging from Rs.2,940 for up to 25 devices to Rs.29,940 for up to 500 devices, with the ability to scale into thousands of devices, billions of data points processing and storage. For more information, please visit: https://www.zoho.com/iot/ Zoho Privacy Pledge Zoho respects user privacy and does not have an ad-revenue model in any part of its business, including its free products. The company owns and operates its data centres, ensuring complete oversight of customer data, privacy, and security. More than 100 million users around the world, across hundreds of thousands of companies, rely on Zoho everyday to run their businesses, including Zoho itself. For more information, please visit: https://www.zoho.com/privacy-commitment.html About Zoho With 55+ apps in nearly every major business category, Zoho Corporation is one of the world's most prolific technology companies. Headquartered in Chennai, India, Zoho is privately held and profitable with more than 15,000 employees. For more information, please visit: www.zoho.com

Zoho Joins ONDC With Seller App Vikra, Launches Low-Code Platform Zoho IoT

While Vikra is a seller app that will facilitate onboarding of businesses on the state-backed Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC), Zoho IoT is a low-code platform that will allow companies to build and deploy custom IoT (Internet of Things) solutions. In a statement on Wednesday (September 25), the company said that Vikra will offer a seller app on the government-backed ONDC and facilitate businesses with easy onboarding, setting up stores and making product catalogues on the network. Besides, it will also offer personalised solutions for managing operations, reconciling payment settlement from the ONDC network, and resolving customer disputes. Built on Zoho's finance and operations platform, the company said that Vikra can also be integrated with its other applications such as Zoho Books, Zoho Inventory and Zoho Commerce. The Chennai-based SaaS major said that users will be charged a seller app fee of 1% of the total transaction amount on every sale as part of its introductory offer. "Vikra represents the kind of innovation that supports ONDC's mission to make ecommerce accessible to all. By integrating such advanced solutions from Zoho, we are not just simplifying technology for businesses, we are also opening doors to a vast, inclusive digital economy," said ONDC's managing director and chief CEO T Koshy. Meanwhile, the second new product Zoho IoT will allow customers to collect and manage IoT device data in real time, and leverage this information to gather insights and streamline operational analysis. "The platform's (Zoho IoT's) AI capabilities transform data into actionable insights, predict system outages, identify anomalies or forecast trends, optimise operations, and enhance customer experiences," said a statement from Zoho. Zoho IoT will be chargeable at plans starting INR 2,940 for up to 25 devices and INR 29,940 for up to 500 devices. The launches come at a time when the Chennai-based company has been on a launch spree lately. Earlier in the day, CEO and founder Sridhar Vembu said that Zoho has applied for permissions to launch a semiconductor venture, adding that the matter was currently being evaluated by the authorities. Work on multiple aspects, like finalising the technology and various partners, is currently underway, he told reporters, adding that it is "too premature" to talk about details including the final location for the project. Earlier this year, Zoho also rolled out a host of product offerings for its global enterprise customers, including revamped 'Zoho CRM for Everyone' to boost customer growth and improve their experience. In February, the company rolled out Zakya, a new business division for retail business in India to offer a point-of-sale (PoS) solution for retail stores to streamline their day-to-day operations.