Zoho Corporation, the Chennai-headquartered global technology company, has seen 81 percent annual growth in India in 2021 in its Zoho Books business, while the Zoho Finance platform has achieved 50 percent year-on-year (YoY) growth globally. Zoho Finance supports more than half a million businesses across 160 countries.
Zoho Books is an online accounting service that automates business workflows and helps collaborate across departments.
Zoho Finance includes Zoho Books, but also offers solutions for inventory management, travel and expense management, billing, subscription management, and payroll management.
Zoho recently conducted a survey to understand how accountants and financial advisors benefit from using cloud accounting software instead of legacy applications, it said in a media statement on Friday.
“While 88 percent of the accountants said they were able to save up to 10 hours a week using Zoho’s cloud-based accounting software, over 85 percent reported being able to provide more advisory services because of the time saved on performing crucial accounting tasks,” said Sivaramakrishnan Iswaran, Global Head, Zoho Finance and Operations Suite, in an interaction with Moneycontrol.
Iswaran added that Zoho Books’ growth figures are prior to QuickBooks ceasing operations in India.
“Most of the other solutions available in India are not compatible with latest regulatory changes or takes time to scale and develop product, so Zoho Books is the most obvious choice. For this reason, among others, post QuickBooks' exit, we anticipate accelerated growth in 2022,” He said.
Apart from QuickBooks’ exit, Zoho’s ability to scale and conform to any new policy and regulatory changes has also helped grow the business, Iswaran added.
The company surveyed 350 businesses in India that used Zoho Books. The survey revealed that around 75 percent of the companies could follow up with customers automatically, which helped improve collections.
"Typically, businesses start by using one of our finance products and then expand their usage to other applications within the suite. On average, customers using Zoho Books for more than one year adopt at least two other applications within the finance suite,” the company said in a media statement.
Zoho Finance is betting big on the Middle East and Africa, apart from India.
“India is of course a strategic bet for us. However, we are also seeing increased adoption in South Africa, Kenya, Mexico, and other developing countries,” Iswaran said.
Last week, Zoho said that it had clocked a revenue of $1 billion in 2021.
“Our fastest growing market is India, although growth has gone down. It is fast approaching the number 3 position for us and could become number 2 in five years. In 10 years, it might become number 1,” said Zoho CEO and co-founder Sridhar Vembu while announcing the numbers last week.
"The biggest challenge is acquiring new customers. But once a customer is on board, they hardly change the accounting software,’’ Iswaran said.
“While the Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) may have gone up by 3-5 percent due to macroeconomic pressures, we are seeing one of the highest retention rates for Zoho Books,” he added.
Talking about macroeconomic pressures, Iswaran said that growing organically, strategic hiring, and strict marketing budgets have and will help Zoho survive the situation.
“All the years will not be like 2021, where we saw big growth and demand. All businesses, including Zoho’s, will be slightly hit (due to macroeconomic pressures). However, we are very well prepared. We are not a high-cost software product,” he added.
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