Hariharan Muralimanohar
Head of Marketing, Zoho One
Years with Zoho
Years with Zoho
What did you want to be while growing up?
Varied between Actor, Cricketer, and Scientist.
A leader that inspires you?
APJ Abdul Kalam and MS Dhoni.
Your go-to comfort food?
Thai Green Curry and Ghee Dosa.
Describe your current role in the organization.
I spearhead the marketing efforts for Zoho One, Zoho’s application suite comprising 45+ applications. This broadly involves marketing activities to spread awareness on how Zoho One could serve as an end-to-end ‘operating system’ for businesses of all types to run their entire operations, inspiring the marketing team to create and distribute solid content that resonates with the target market, maintaining customer engagements to identify and nurture customer advocates, and keeping the Zoho One flywheel spinning eternally. :)
What role does Zoho’s company culture play in your identity and the work that you do?
The value gained from a workplace culture that provides freedom and autonomy is unquantifiable. Zoho’s culture has honed me to be more humble, kind, and humane. Starting from my humble beginnings as a content writer/marketer for Zoho CRM, I was empowered to manage marketing for individual products such as Zoho Meeting, Assist, and Mail. Finally, I scaled up to manage marketing for product suites such as Zoho Workplace and, now, Zoho One. I have been blessed to have ridden a gradual curve up, thanks to the culture of patient leadership that dissipates from the top, down.
What were the highest and lowest points of your journey with Zoho?
There have been many high moments. Probably the top-most would be the day Zoho Mail sign-ups breached 1,000 per day, after having struggled to cross 10 per day during my initial months in Zoho Mail marketing. :) It felt great that some of the marketing and product management strategies were finally making an impact.
On the contrary, the lowest point was during the initial months in Zoho Mail when we couldn’t even reach 10 signups per day despite various efforts. Another low would be when an entire website we had worked on never went live and had to be redone from scratch because of other decisions involved. However, I consider the lows as necessary phases to reach the highs.
Your most embarrassing blunder?
I have committed many and do my best to forget them! What comes to mind first is when I had the collar mic still on after presenting at an event. I walked away from the podium and indulged in some yapping, oblivious that the audience was hearing it all loud and clear. Another instance would be when I deleted a bunch of updated web pages in carelessness and had not just me, but many others, redo our work over weeks.
What are your hobbies or favorite activities outside of work?
I’m a movie, sports, and music lover. Also, an adventure enthusiast and foodie. I used to play cricket for my school, college, and later residential apartment, and corporate cricket teams. Recently, I have transitioned to playing doubles tennis for 90 minutes every weekday morning as I like to spend more time with my family; I’m doing my best to entertain my daughter, son, and wife while clocking family time. I love watching documentaries, and following tech and travel channels. I also go on occasional hiking trips with friends.
Your advice to the younger generation of leaders.
The digital generation has made all of us used to having everything happen instantly at the touch or swipe of a screen. This effect is elevated in the young Gen Z generation. They seek similar ‘instant gratification’ in the workplace. However, it’s better to practice patient perseverance for long term success instead of bursts of short term adrenaline rushes. If one is aspiring to be a leader, strive not to be seen as a manager but an inspiration/motivator who has an impact in making colleagues tap into their talents and be the best version of themselves.
Words of Wisdom
Here are three key takeaways I have internalized, thanks to my life experiences that hold good for eternity:
The more you learn, the more you realize you don’t know much at all.
The value gained from having a healthy culture, freedom, and autonomy, is unquantifiable.
Successful outcomes are not guaranteed. Take pride in your own consistent efforts and appreciate the efforts of others, even if results for those efforts are not always successful.