BizBahrain Magazine (May-June 2019)

Interview | Zoho Corp
be that way? So every time we saw the
situation we said that we can do it and
we can do it in a better way and we can
make it much more affordable. So that
has always been the inspiration for us
to continue to build these products.
And now we probably compete with
certainly every IT management
software company.
The ultimate investment
will be a data centre. We
don’t have a schedule
for it yet, but we are
working towards that.
We know that most
countries are sensitive
to where their data lies
and who has access to
it and the Middle East is
no different.
Can you tell us a little more about the
ZOHO side of the business?
The ZOHO side of the business
is selling to the other part of
the organisation, which is sales
organisation, the marketing
organisation, finance, HR. These are
all software that they use to run their
functional areas. And again the same
type of concept kicked in where as
we were growing we had about 3-4
hundred people and we had to license
Microsoft Exchange for email. It was
really expensive for all the inboxes that
you needed - for a few hundred people
came to tens of thousands of dollars a
year. We said it doesn’t have to be that
expensive. And so we came out with our
own email, our own office suite that is
every bit is good if not better and it is
well-integrated.
Salesforce was another thing that
we were using, the CRM, but it was 150
dollars all the way up to 300 dollars per
user per month. And we said for our size
company, and we are going to grow, that
is just too much. So then we build our
own CRM and we started to sell that at
a third the cost, and today it is probably
one of the most popular in the world.
We are much past our early days. Now
we have close to 7000 people in our
company. We are global. We are very
healthy and profitable. But we continue
to follow that same model
A good part of your operations are based
in Chennai. Is India an integral part of
the company’s future?
ManageEngine has a workforce of
over 2,500 members in Chennai (India)
and offices in the US, Europe, China and
Japan. We also opened an R&D centre
near Chennai recently with about 500
engineers. A lot of our software is in the
cloud as well and we run our own data
centres. There are eight of them around
the world serving 45 million users
How do you think the operation can
support SMEs
It has been a game-changer for
SMEs. They can appear much larger if
they leverage technology. Fortunately,
with companies like ManageEngine,
the price points are at a place that
SMEs can also enjoy the benefits of
its sophisticated software. What is
interesting about SMEs is that they
have been a major beneficiary of the
whole positive tidal wave of technology.
It has created more opportunities for
them to absorb technology much easier.
As technology is a great equalizer,
leveraging technology allows them
to compete with bigger competitors,
expand their market.
Tell us about some of your newest
innovations?
We recently introduced Zia, Zoho's
AI assistant and virtual IT support
agent, supported by the cloud version
of ServiceDesk Plus, our flagship IT
service management solution. Zia can
answer simple questions, perform
service desk operations, and interact
with third-party apps, reducing
response times and boosting technician
efficiency. End users and technicians
can chat with Zia in a conversational
interface, or converse with Zia Voice to
access more than a dozen out-of-thebox
Zia actions, as well as any custom
Zia actions created by service desk
teams.
Apart from the out-of-the-box Zia
actions available, service desk teams
can script custom Zia actions to answer
questions, perform activities in external
tools that integrate with ServiceDesk
Plus, and more. The serverless Zia
developer console offers development
and production modes, making it easier
for service desk teams to script and
save custom Zia actions for immediate
use in ServiceDesk Plus. Each custom
Zia action can be built with multiple
conversations, and IT staff can add
provisions for Zia to collect appropriate
inputs at every stage of an interaction.
We started with network
monitoring, then we
came out with what
ManageEngine is
best known for - our
ServiceDesk help desk,
which is the main
communication hub for
IT organisations.
How do you see yourself becoming a
part of and contributing to the Middle
East ecosystem?
The demand for technology at
the moment is huge and any time
technology is deployed, ManageEngine
is going to be deployed to support that
effort. We achieved a 35pc growth in
Bahrain last year, which for a company
in business for 20 years is very
significant. I think we can grow even
faster. That’s the kind of environment
we are in right now. We anticipate major,
double-digit growth in these markets
partly because of the fact that we got
into this region, including Dubai early
and we have big partners. It’s easy to
do business from India in Dubai and we
got an early start on that too and still
growing well.
The ultimate investment will be a
data centre. We don’t have a schedule
for it yet, but we are working towards
that. We know that most countries are
sensitive to where their data lies and
who has access to it and the Middle East
is no different.
May-June 2019
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