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Google partners with Zoho, Instamojo, and many others to help SMBs go digital.

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The current economic situation caused due to the outburst of COVID-19 has brought heavy losses for many new and small businesses. Though the global economy is suffering, the SMBs are facing the hardest of challenges. They can neither repair the damage eventually like big companies nor then can shut it down. So, Google has decided to help support these SMBs to build their business, have a strong digital presence, and combat the economic sinister.

Yesterday, Google announced that it has partnered with Zoho, Instamojo, and many other companies to provide a better and a digital presence for the SMBs. Since the lockdown, every operation as far as possible has been conducted virtually. So, this might be the right time to take your business online as a part of “the new normal”. This new initiative will help consumers discover such small businesses in Google Maps and Search. These new features will be available on Grow with Google Small Business hub in India.

Google partnered with a few companies 

Apart from collaborating with Zoho and Instamojo, Google has also partnered with Dunzo and Swiggy. These companies will provide their platforms to the businesses which will help the business operate in many ways. Zoho is providing its inventory to these businesses that will be able to create a website for their service and also sell their product online through Zoho Commerce. Also, Zoho is providing these services for free till 31st March 2021. Though we are amidst a pandemic and tough financial mayhem, the SMBs are getting much support through this initiative.

Instamojo is also offering a six-month free subscription to its ‘Premium Online Store Solution’ for the SMBs. To ensure a fast and efficient onboarding process and hassle-free online orders, Google partnered with Dunzo and Swiggy. Dunzo will provide 24X7 merchant supports to these businesses for free. Moreover, Dunzo is also not charging anything for singing up and instant registration. The SMBs can also use Swiggy’s seven days ‘Fast track Onboarding’.

SMBs go digital with Google
Image Source: legal.economictimes.indiatimes.com

Apart from partnering with these companies, Google will soon launch a new show in partnership with Doordarshan called Namaste Digital. This will be a learning show for SMBs on how to grow their business in a digital world.

Google-Kantar small business tracker research

In July, Google has conducted Google-Kantar small business tracker research. And, this new initiative is solely taken based on the feedback from the SMBs and the challenges they are facing. The report showed that 92% of small businesses face customer-related challenges which are the biggest problem of such businesses. Apart from this, revenue loss due to low demand also caused the downfall or dormancy of such businesses. They eventually understood that it will be profitable for their businesses to go digital and hence the numbers are increasing eventually. This is a very strong contribution towards digital India as the unprivileged needs more attention than those who have resources.

What are experts saying?

Shalini Girish, Customer Solutions Director at Google India, in response to this new initiative said that there are millions of small businesses established in a diversified field in India. And, in this time of economic crisis, we need to do everything in our power to support and transform these businesses digitally. Google has also launched a nationwide campaign called ‘Make Small Strong’ to help grow consumer demand for local small businesses. Customers can buy from a local vendor, leave ratings, and thus help the local businesses grow.

Anand Nergunam Sr, VP of Revenue Management, and Growth at Zoho said that the company owes its very existence to SMBs. From the very beginning, Zoho has always focused on supporting and helping small businesses grow and with this collaboration with Google, they will ensure that the small local business community comes out of this economic crisis stronger. Each local business needs to have a digital presence and due to the pandemic, the customer preference towards e-commerce has increased rapidly.

Akash Gehani, the co-founder of Instamojo, said that the SMBs are the backbone of the Indian company and a big contributor to India’s GDP. Currently, Instamojo helps around 1.3 million MSMEs to start and establish their business online. Moreover, in this current situation, it is necessary to unleash the full potential of businesses from startups to SMBs in terms of digital growth.

Sridhar Vembu: How this man from India created a 500 million dollar company that competes with Google?

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Sridhar Vembu is living the dream of every entrepreneur. He is constantly chased by VCs and he is rejecting them! The company, who are the makers of online Zoho Office Suite and other similar products, has reached to an extent where Mac Benioff, the CEO of Salesforce.com, is desperate to buy the company, due to nervousness of getting out-beaten. But Sridhar rejected his offer as well.

Beginning of an era

sridhar vembu
image Credit: https://www.zoho.com

Sridhar Vembu belongs to a modest middle class family, situated in Chennai, India. He completed his schooling from a government aided school in Tamilnadu. He then went to IIT-Madras and obtained his undergraduate degree. At IIT, he met Tony Thomas, who was three years senior to him, and who is the co-founder of AdventNet, which later became Zoho Corporation. Later on, Sridhar moved to Princeton University, in 1989, and completed his Electrical Engineering.

In 1994, he completed his Ph.D. and joined Qualcomm, where he worked for two years. When his brother suggested the plan to start a company, he quit his job at Qualcomm and rushed back to India. The two brothers along with Tony Thomas founded Vembu Software.

All the business was bootstrapped, with the investment made only by family and friends. To this day, when the Zoho had become a multi-million dollar company, they still work without any external funding, rejecting the continuous offers they keep on receiving.

“On those fundamental principles, we are not budging,” says Raju Vegesna, 37, Zoho’s chief evangelist. “We keep getting calls from venture capitalists but Sridhar (CEO) has even blogged asking them not to bug us.”

The business started well and they sold their products to a lot of companies in Silicon Valley and in Japan too. By the end of the year 2000, they’d grown to 115 engineers in India, 7 employees in US, with a business of $10 Million USD.

The setback and the comeback

In the year 2001, during the Dot Com Bubble burst, the networking faced a huge setback. The company customers list reduced from 150 customers down to just three customers. This resulted into a lot of resources and engineers being idle.

What seemed like a setback was blessing in disguise. They took two mandatory decisions.

They took the management networking software which they sold as Order Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) and converted it into an Enterprise model. This gave birth to ManageEngine.

On the other hand they had an on demand effort. They invested some man power and resources into that and this gave rise to Zoho!

The company changed its name to AdventNet in 2005, and later changed it to Zoho Corporation in 2009. The business started growing over the internet for the rented software rather than selling the licensed copy for expensive software. They started Zoho.com, offering internet based software for work. They also started three more divisions, Zoho.com, WebNMS and Manage Engine. The graph of company’s growth headed upwards rapidly. Sridhar and team so loved the name Zoho that the domain name was purchased for $5000 from a us based startup that was in liquidation process.

By the end of the year 2012, the total revenue of the Zoho Corporation was near to $120 million USD and that of 2006 was $500 million USD, with 18 million users worldwide!

zoho sample
Image Credit: Wikipedia

Company culture and competition

Zoho has its own way of recruiting. They had set up their own Zoho University where they hire college dropouts and underprivileged students from low income backgrounds and train them to code and develop software products in India.

“I hardly spoke any English at the time, but I was really good at math… maybe that’s why they hired me,” says Babu, who was one of six young people recruited into what would become the first batch of trainees at Zoho University. He is now 28 and is product manager at Chennai based Zoho corporation private limited. Unlike other big shots in software industry, Vembu believes in smartness of individuals and hence recruits in a very innovative fashion. On one hand, where all the toppers are the point of attractions for regular recruiters, Vembu, who is an alumni of an elite institute, invests in training dropouts.

Today Zoho has more than 30 products that compete with big companies like Google & Salesforce. Vembu believe that he makes his prime minister and country proud in their Make In India campaign. ‘I am a great fan of Modi,’ says Vembu.

Although their customer base is spread worldwide, their major man power source is in India, that too, otherwise neglected youth. Thus, the true objective of make in India is fulfilled by Vembu and company.