Software major Zoho's co-founder and chief executive officer Sridhar Vembu announced a slew of updates to its communication and collaboration platform 'Zoho Cliq' on October 9 as he pointed out that Salesforce's communication platform Slack is not viable and lacks good AI capability integrations.
"There are only three major players in the segment. I don't consider Slack to be viable as Salesforce hasn't done much in terms of integrating new AI capabilities...And Zoom is only now working on its chat capabilities," Vembu said addressing the media during its user conference event 'Zoholics' held in Bengaluru.
Zoho Cliq which was launched in 2017 is a team communication software for businesses that comes with features like instant messaging, audio, and video calls. Zoho Cliq directly competes with Slack and Zoom.
Zoho has said that it is seeing a 30 percent increase in user migration from Slack and Zooms to Zoho Cliq.
Cliq has also seen a 150 percent growth in revenue in India in 2023 and has grown 4X since 2020, the firm said.
"Zoho Cliq is one of the most-used apps in Zoho One. We are seeing a 30% increase in user migration from Slack and Zoom...The Indian collaboration market size is around $275.5 million by 2028," the firm said in a media statement.
Zoho Cliq is available for use, with an unlimited plan starting at Rs 36 per user per month. The newly launched features will be available from November 2023 in its enterprise edition offered at Rs 200 per user per month, according to the company.
One of the unique selling propositions of the platform includes a customizable interface that can be changed to different languages like Hindi, Tamil, and Kannada.
"We are building many capabilities into this and now we have also put the language customization capability. I'm also part of the committee where we focus on Indian language promotion. We are also advising the government and implementing it in this software arena," Vembu added.
Zoom, which saw its demand peak during the peak of Covid-19 pandemic where workplaces shifted to working from home, is now looking at a slowdown. In fact, as per media reports, Zoom cut its staff by 15 percent in February this year to save costs.
Meanwhile, Zoho has announced new updates like Cliq Rooms, which is an app for Android TVs where users can schedule meetings by connecting to TV audio and video.
The SaaS major has also announced AI functionalities like creating meeting summaries using Zoho's AI assistant Zia. The AI can also create action items as tasks in Zoho projects as well as set follow-up reminders and meetings in Cliq.
Zoho's growth and momentum
Zoho witnessed a slowdown in its business in the month of September across countries and across its products on the back of tight macroeconomic pressure wrote Vembu on Twitter.
Despite a global economic slowdown and a low demand for software products in the month of September, Zoho said that its growth in India is driven by its diverse portfolio of products.
"The top products driving growth are Zoho One, Zoho CX Suite, Zoho People, Zoho Books, and Zoho Workplace...Zoho's partner network is growing 30% year-on-year," the firm said in the statement.
Chennai-based Zoho surpassed 100 million million users across over 55 business applications in September. In FY22, Zoho crossed $1 billion of annual recurring revenue and Zoho's net profit was up by 43 percent YoY, touching Rs 2,700 crore.
"India is currently the third largest market for Zoho, behind the US and the European Union. Vembu told the media on October 9 that he believes India has the potential to be the second-largest market in 2-4 years, and the largest market in a decade," Vembu said.
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