After years of blistering growth by securing hundreds of thousands of customers, Zoho is showing no signs of slowing down by adding 100,000+ new customers in 2021.
Usability, aggressive pricing, and a laser focus on its versatile platform (Zoho Creator) backed by a robust infrastructure (10 data centers) that supports more than 50 Zoho applications are some of the key attributes of Zoho.
Riding on the wave of low-code development tool, Zoho Creator has grown 30% last year, briskly securing 14,000 paying customers in 2021. Much of the growth is derived from companies using Zoho Creator to automate and improve business processes such as inventory management, document or record management as well as back-office financial transactions.
At its core is the Zoho platform that delivers both infrastructure and platform services like compute, storage, search, business intelligence, messaging, IT service management as well as a raft of developer tools for customers to accommodate their own industry-specific requirements by layering their business processes and workflow on top of Zoho applications.
Recently, Zoho released the 6th version of Zoho Creator Platform, a PaaS solution that supports developers of all skill levels to build, manage, integrate, and analyze for a complete low-code experience, enabling 10X faster deployment than any other solution on the market, according to company executives.
Democratizing access to low-code development tools allows the IT and business users to work in tandem, to create and deploy apps that are highly customized while minimizing common interoperability, permissions, and governance challenges.
“With this update, Zoho’s Creator Platform combines application development, integrations, process automation, business intelligence, and analytics into one single platform while simultaneously enabling IT teams to effortlessly manage security, compliance, and governance challenges,” says Raju Vegesna, Zoho Chief Evangelist. “Now, organizations can leverage a unified solution for all of their low-code needs, extending the ability to innovate to every employee.”
Zoho Creator Platform Latest Release features include:
Features | #1 | #2 | #3 |
Solution Building | Unified Solution Builder – Create, integrate, analyze, and manage custom business solutions at scale from a single dashboard. | Artificial Intelligence (AI) – Zoho’s intelligent AI assistant (Zia) now enables developers to import data from anywhere, cleanse and transform with one click. | Process Blueprinting – This intuitive drag-and-drop builder graphically constructs an online replica of a business Process by specifying each step. |
Connected Ecosystem | Unified Data Modeling – Universal cloud modeling is now included to help developers establish secure data transfer by automating data integration. | Integration Status Dashboard – Users have complete visibility of how well each integration operates with the new Integration Status Dashboard. | Embedded BI and Analytics Engine – Industry-first, full-fledged business intelligence and analytics engine is now included in the Zoho Creator Platform. |
End-to-End ADLM | Environments – Developers can now launch solutions in different environments of choice development, staging, or production. | Centralized Governance – Features such as granular role-based access controls, comprehensive audit trails, and backup options, application IDE, and billing. | Communication and Collaboration Aid – Integrated communication enables messaging, sending files, sharing screens, and the ability to make audio and video calls. |
With some 10,000 employees around the world, Zoho now poses a serious threat to CRM incumbents like Salesforce, HubSpot, Zendesk as well as other Wall Street darlings or unicorns that need to satisfy institutional investors, private equity firms or VCs by promising unsustainable growth at all costs. As heavyweights like Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Oracle are spending billions on world-class network infrastructure as the prerequisite to dominate the Cloud, Zoho can do it for a lot less since it focuses primarily on its 75 million registered users, specifically the 600,000+ paying customers. As more of these registered users are converted to paying customers, they can scale out to meet their future needs with Zoho’s low-code development platform Zoho Creator.
Zoho is also gearing up to chase a bigger market – namely ERP with Zoho One by going after Intuit QuickBooks, Sage, and Xero which has about 10 times the installed base of Zoho. Last year Intuit introduced QBO Advanced by dangling steep introductory discounts and Live Help, essentially an online assistant to help with accounting issues. However, channel conflicts could render such Live Help ahead of its time. Still, Zoho, in its quest to become a full-stack provider from CRM and ERP to IaaS and PaaS must come up with a coherent strategy to compete with Intuit, Sage and Microsoft, all of which offer a much bigger channel ecosystem than Zoho.
In 2021, Zoho succeeded in displacing Microsoft, Oracle, Salesforce, and SAP systems among midmarket organizations searching for a viable, simple to run and less costly alternative to these familiar brands, according to customer purchase records derived from our Buyer Insight Master Database. However, in order to make its upmarket strategy successful, 2022 will be a turning point for Zoho to commit not just professional services and support resources, but also sustain and extend its existing APaaS offerings for enterprise accounts.
Here are some of the companies that have adopted Zoho Creator as excerpted from our Buyer Insight Master Database:
Customer | Industry | Empl. | Revenue | Country | New Product | When |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
365 Workplace Safety | Professional Services | 10 | $1.0M | United States | Zoho Creator | 2020 |
Aboitiz Equity Venture | Banking and Financial Services | 3600 | $3.64B | Philippines | Zoho Creator | 2018 |
ACI Design | Professional Services | 10 | $1.0M | United States | Zoho Creator | 2020 |
Air Rail | Professional Services | 50 | $8.0M | Spain | Zoho Creator | 2015 |
All India Chess Federation (AICF) | Professional Services | 30 | $3.0M | India | Zoho Creator | 2019 |
America Ship | Transportation | 20 | $2.0M | United States | Zoho Creator | 2021 |
Anand and Anand | Professional Services | 400 | $50.0M | India | Zoho Creator | 2021 |
Auction Caddy | Professional Services | 100 | $10.0M | United States | Zoho Creator | 2015 |
AXTRO | JMD Pacific Pte Ltd | Distribution | 70 | $5.0M | Singapore | Zoho Creator | 2019 |
Bailey Consulting & Training (BCT) | Professional Services | 10 | $1.0M | Australia | Zoho Creator | 2017 |
Bourne Leisure | Leisure & Hospitality | 17500 | $683.0M | United Kingdom | Zoho Creator | 2020 |
Briotix Health LP | Professional Services | 360 | $70.0M | United States | Zoho Creator | 2020 |
Courier Logistics | Transportation | 132 | $23.0M | United Kingdom | Zoho Creator | 2018 |
deSiam | Consumer Packaged Goods | 20 | $2.0M | Thailand | Zoho Creator | 2017 |
Double Take Fashions | Manufacturing | 10 | $1.0M | United States | Zoho Creator | 2018 |
ED Insights | Professional Services | 12 | $1.0M | United States | Zoho Creator | 2020 |
Emirates Logistics India | Professional Services | 500 | $30.0M | India | Zoho Creator | 2021 |
Finar | Life Sciences | 3500 | $550.0M | India | Zoho Creator | 2019 |
FreightApp | Professional Services | 10 | $1.0M | United Arab Emirates | Zoho Creator | 2021 |
Global Education and Career Development Abroad (GlobalEd) | Education | 20 | $5.0M | United States | Zoho Creator | 2021 |
Government of Karnataka | Government | 5300 | $1.00B | India | Zoho Creator | 2018 |
Greater Chennai Corporation (GCC) | Government | 400 | $400.0M | India | Zoho Creator | 2021 |
Hubsafe | Professional Services | 1600 | $100.0M | France | Zoho Creator | 2017 |
ICP | Professional Services | 200 | $35.0M | United Kingdom | Zoho Creator | 2021 |
IOA Global | Education | 100 | $10.0M | India | Zoho Creator | 2019 |
IOI Properties Group | Banking and Financial Services | 2291 | $540.0M | Malaysia | Zoho Creator | 2021 |
ITK Education Services Pvt Ltd | Education | 50 | $6.0M | India | Zoho Creator | 2017 |
Jetkool Exports India | Transportation | 30 | $3.0M | India | Zoho Creator | 2017 |
KRC Logistics | Transportation | 20 | $2.0M | India | Zoho Creator | 2016 |
Kumi Motors | Automotive | 800 | $100.0M | Mexico | Zoho Creator | 2021 |
La Cháchara | Retail | 20 | $2.0M | Mexico | Zoho Creator | 2021 |
MAK Consulting Pte Ltd | Professional Services | 40 | $3.0M | Singapore | Zoho Creator | 2016 |
MTN | Communications | 19200 | $11.63B | South Africa | Zoho Creator | 2021 |
National Maternity Hospital (NMH) | Healthcare | 1000 | $100.0M | Ireland | Zoho Creator | 2020 |
Oldershaw Group | Consumer Packaged Goods | 350 | $80.0M | United Kingdom | Zoho Creator | 2020 |
Ozelia | Manufacturing | 300 | $30.0M | Turkey | Zoho Creator | 2020 |
Pexion Group | Manufacturing | 50 | $32.0M | United Kingdom | Zoho Creator | 2015 |
Ramakrishna Mission Students’ Home | Education | 500 | $50.0M | India | Zoho Creator | 2020 |
Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland – Bahrain | Education | 250 | $30.0M | Bahrain | Zoho Creator | 2021 |
Sakae Sushi | Leisure & Hospitality | 400 | $21.0M | Japan | Zoho Creator | 2016 |
SmartLam North America | Construction and Real Estate | 90 | $30.0M | United States | Zoho Creator | 2018 |
SRM University | Education | 400 | $50.0M | India | Zoho Creator | 2020 |
Studio 31 | Professional Services | 50 | $5.0M | India | Zoho Creator | 2017 |
Studio 83 | Professional Services | 15 | $2.0M | Hong Kong | Zoho Creator | 2020 |
Tata Projects | Construction and Real Estate | 10000 | $1.50B | India | Zoho Creator | 2020 |
Transport Michiels (TMI) | Transportation | 250 | $40.0M | Belgium | Zoho Creator | 2020 |
University of Michigan Health System | Education | 500 | $120.0M | United States | Zoho Creator | 2020 |
Yellow Africa | Professional Services | 70 | $10.0M | Malawi | Zoho Creator | 2021 |
Zyenac Solutions | Professional Services | 20 | $4.0M | India | Zoho Creator | 2021 |
Source: Apps Run The World, April 2022