Zoho
More info
- Creator
- Sridhar Vembu, Tony Thomas
- Released
- 1996
- Type
- SaaS company
- Website
- zoho.com
Indian SaaS company with around fifty business apps, grown large without a cent of venture capital.
Sridhar Vembu and Tony Thomas founded AdventNet in 1996 to sell network management tools, a business that lives on as ManageEngine. Through the 2000s the company built web-based office apps and a CRM system, and in 2009 renamed itself Zoho after its best-known product line. Headquarters are in Chennai.
Zoho competes with Salesforce, Microsoft and Google on almost every front, but on price and with an unusual stance: no outside investors, no advertising revenue and its own datacenters. Vembu moved to a village in Tamil Nadu to build rural offices, and in 2025 stepped down as CEO to become chief scientist.