The year 2020 made sure it was a force to be reckoned with
Thousands of businesses, including us, were thrust into a "new-normal" mode of survival. We knew we had to act quickly. Not just to stay afloat, but to ease the economic burden that small businesses and our local communities were facing.
We did our best, and we know you did too.
While we wrap up 2020 and prepare for the new year, we wanted to re-live and share some of the major milestones that helped us get this far.
Firming up on our core principles and preparing for change
The year began with us still reeling from hitting the 50-million-user mark and winning the "2019 Best Enterprise Software Vendor" award!
We had a promising start with ZohoDay—our annual analyst meet-up—where we brought together customers and analysts from different verticals. At this event, we discussed all things Zoho and set the tone for the rest of the year.
We opened a new office in Dubai this month! Our in-house artists came up with original murals for our workspace that perfectly represents our philosophy: Business software—our craft, our passion.
"At Zoho, we are taking a stance. We are not going to let surveillance companies track users on our property."
We further solidified our commitment to data security and privacy by taking a stand against "adjunct surveillance," which roughly translates to customer data being illicitly tracked by third-parties. We also removed all third-party trackers from our websites.
We were purposeful and intentional in moving away from being just a "software company" to a more well-defined role as a "technology company." We renewed our focus on building full-stack expertise and directing our efforts towards investing heavily in R&D.
Our CEO, Sridhar Vembu, forecasted a "cloud-enabled rural revival" process taking place in the next 10 years. He also spoke about bringing high-tech opportunities back to the local communities.
We announced our very own appointment scheduling app—Zoho Bookings.
Sridhar was awarded the "Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year 2019" award in the Services category.
We debuted a Zoho One campaign during the Super Bowl this month! If you missed out on watching our video, we think this might delight you.
For most of us, this was the year's most pivotal month. All 8000 of us at Zoho—across 12 offices—made a quick transition to working-from-home in just 3 days.
We made the decision to cancel all our in-person events, including our signature user conference—Zoholics. We also moved some of our physical events online. In fact, we hosted our first-ever virtual press conference on Zoho Meeting.
In response to the pandemic, we launched two important initiatives for our customers and community:
A Small Business Emergency Subscription Assistance Program (ESAP), to lighten the financial load on our small business customers severely impacted by the economic disruption.
Zoho Remotely: A remote-working toolkit to help businesses quickly adapt to new remote working conditions. Though initially offered for free until July 1st, 2020, we later extended its free use through November.
Building resilience, embracing remote work, and experimenting with satellite offices
We put together relief initiatives and remote working resources to help businesses smoothly transition to WFH and help them stay connected with their customers. We also set up a new Vertical Relief Program (VRP) to assist organizations globally in Education, Non-Profit, Government, and Retail sectors.
We launched Zoho Influence: our new destination for thought leadership and insight from customers and industry experts. We've always been big on advocating and rooting for our customers. So we made this move to bring more of their inspiring stories to light.
We introduced Zoho Classes, a new mobile app to help schools and colleges teach students online.
This month saw our vision for revitalizing rural economies, training local talent, and building remote offices in the smallest of villages—start to take shape. Sridhar appeared in a Forbes India cover story to discuss this initiative.
Zoho Desk was named a "Niche" in the 2020 Gartner Magic Quadrant for the CRM Customer Engagement Center.
“About a year or two ago, I decided that I wanted to do something new. I want to go to the smaller villages and set up what I call satellite connected office centers where 10 to 20 people will work.”
We plan to adopt this model not just in India, but also in Mexico (Queretaro), the US (Austin, Texas), and Japan.
Fostering rural economic revival and making strides in new technologies
From adopting a culture of experimentation, to being relentlessly self-critical— Sridhar shared his thoughts on being resilient, agile, and staying relevant as a business.
Beagle Research Group (on behalf of Zoho) surveyed more than 500 employees from businesses of varying sizes and industries throughout North America. This report revealed some of the major pain points for employees as they tried to transition to today's work while still using yesterday's technology. Here's the full report.
Zoho Workplace, an Enterprise Collaboration Platform, hit the 15-million-user mark. The platform also experienced adoption by customers that moved away from tools like Slack, Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and G Suite.
Zoho CRM was named a "Challenger" in the 2020 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Sales Force Automation.
Our very own down-to-earth typeface,
Zoho Puvi, came to life.
The farm at our Austin campus (opened in February before COVID-19 became widespread) finally started bearing fruit! It produced over 30 varieties of crops—everything from basil, mint, and lavender to apples, peaches, and melons. It also became a place for our colleagues to reconnect (from a safe social distance).
Demonstrating positivity, vigor, and enthusiasm in serving businesses worldwide
We doubled down on our commitment to protecting customer data. From questioning what "consumer surveillance" and "business surveillance" means in today's modern society, to understanding the long-term implications of "sensory surveillance"—our leadership discussed what they see as the future of data privacy.
Among the many notable partnerships and accolades we received, we were especially proud of:
360Quadrants placing Zoho Show as a "Visionary Leader" in the presentation software market, Zoho ShowTime as an "Innovator" in the presentation software space, and Zoho Meeting as a "Visionary Leader" in the webinar software space.
We won IDC's 2020 SaaS CSAT Award for Subscription Billing!
We released Zoho Transmail, a transactional email service from Zoho Mail.
We announced a strategic partnership with Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) to provide end-to-end business solutions to enterprise and mid-market companies. This partnership will drive growth for global organizations through better alignment between technology and business goals, more transparency across solutions, and greater operational efficiency.
Zoho Creator was named a "Leader" in Nucleus Research's LCAP Technology Value Matrix 2020 report.
K2 awarded Zoho with the "Best Overall Mobile Strategy" in its 2020 Quality Awards. Amazingly, despite our offering being relatively new, we also won K2's award for "CPA Program," as well.
A new Zoho study: Together with CRM Essentials, we surveyed 1400+ North American business leaders and found out that third-party ad tracking is ubiquitous and tolerated. 100% of respondents said their companies allow tracking, while 57% were “comfortable” with the way third-parties use customer data.
Zoho Analytics topped the BARC BI & Analytics Survey with 12 top rankings and 28 leading positions across 5 different peer groups!
We won IDC's 2020 SaaS CSAT Award for Sales Force Automation!
Finally, we bid 2020 adieu, and ended the year on a truly exhilarating note: Constellation Research named Sridhar Vembu "Best CEO of the Year" in their annual Enterprise Awards!
Standing firm in our commitments to you
The pandemic surely did change the course of modern history, but if there's one thing that remains constant for us, it's our ability to reinvent ourselves, time and again, in the face of adversity.
Creating software has always been our craft and passion. And we've been relentless in our pursuit of solving business problems through the products we build. As more organizations make their way to the cloud, we're doubling our efforts on simplifying our suite of apps to support and serve businesses of all sizes.
A big thank you to our partners, colleagues, and users (now, over 60 million!) for being a part of our journey. More importantly, thank you for pushing us to be better every day and trusting us with your life's work.
We hope you have a wonderful start to the New Year!