Do More With Zoho: IoT Innovation, Data Privacy, and Sustainable Tech Solutions

Exclusive Interview with Hyther Nizam, President Zoho Middle East and Africa.  
 
Can you elaborate on what the tagline “Do more with Zoho” means?

Generally, a software vendor has one or two products catering to very specific needs. At zero, we have 50+ applications, catering to all the departments in an organization. Be it sales, marketing, finance, or HR; you name it, we have it. So that’s exactly what we say. “Do more with Zoho”. It’s not just one or two functions; once you get into Zoho, you end up doing more and utilizing more of our software.

Zoho is expanding globally. Your presence can be seen at major events like Leap and GITEX. How are these events working out for the brand?

We are, making very good inroads in all the major markets in the Middle East, especially in the UAE and Saudi. As you rightly mentioned, at GITEX and Leap and other big conferences summits, and whatnot. So, our presence in this region is increasing month by month and year after year. And these kinds of events are helping us in conveying our branding, and our messaging to our customers. And, a lot of prospects come to these events, and we can convert them into sales. So, both from a branding perspective and from the lead generation perspective, these events are working out really well for us in the region.

What are you presenting here at 2024 GITEX Global?

We are launching our Zoho IoT — the Internet of Things. It has been in the works for the last 5–6 years and at GITEX we are launching it. The Zoho IoT can be used for industrial management, smart buildings, and much more. All instances where you want to manage physical devices, physical things, and when you want to derive intelligence out of it. Another major announcement is that we have invested more than 46 million AED as part of the strategic partnerships just in the UAE alone. We have partnered up with the Department of Economy & Tourism, Dubai Culture & Arts, Meydan, etc. We have brought in 7000 new customers through these partnerships, and we are happy and proud of them. For example, the Dubai economy and tourism. Now if you set up any business in Dubai, you get a trade license from DET and as part of that, you get free access to our Zoho One software for one year, supported by the government. And we are the sole vendor being featured in the trade license. 

Dubai’s laws are very different specifically in terms of data privacy. So, what is Zoho doing to ensure data privacy and security?

From the ground up as a company, our philosophy is to be strict on data privacy and security. Way back in 2006 when we wrote our first privacy document, we decided that we were not going to sell our customer data, and we were not going to build our business model by doing that. It’s very important that we have that philosophy and to date, we are adamant on it. Any customer data, coming to Zoho, isn’t being pushed to any third party. And we are very sensitive about data privacy, and that is accelerating our growth. Customers are able to appreciate it, and we are setting up, local data centers and making sure we are compliant with the local laws. We are actually spreading our wings in terms of data privacy. We are one of the early members in attaining the GDPR compliance in Europe or the ISO 127001, the privacy, information, and system compliance. So, when it comes to all of these compliances, we are very privacy-conscious from the ground up.

How does IoT align with Zoho’s existing products?

Let’s say you have a building and IoT can provide you with insights about it, such as the energy consumption is very high at a particular point of time and that you probably need to optimize it. So that’s the kind of insights the IoT provides and that is going to be integrated with different systems. Let’s say you have a technical team, and they are using the Zoho support software. Let’s say your energy level is shooting up. It can be raised as a ticket inside our support software, where internally your team can really attend to the ticket and make sure they fix it. So, the IoT is going to be integrated with all our Zoho offerings, and that’s the power of Zoho. You are not in a silo, the product that you launch is not a silo product. Rather, it is going to integrate with all the 50+ applications that we already have in place. 

Does it deliver a major contribution to sustainability also?

Yes, that’s a promise from us. Let’s say a business is purchasing Zoho IoT, and they want to contribute to sustainability. They can save energy, they can save water, and they can save carbon footprints by utilizing Zoho IoT. Suppose it is suggesting that, for example, the HVAC machine is running unnecessarily for a considerable amount of time during the day. You can probably optimize it. It can predict and give you a lot of intelligence on your action items. So those can be really valuable for the businesses to contribute towards sustainability. 

Why is GITEX important for Zoho?

GITEX is a huge flagship event, not just in the UAE, but in the whole region itself, where you have hundreds and thousands of tech enthusiasts walking into this event, genuinely wanting to get to know about the latest happenings in the industry and the tech world. As a tech company, we get access to those hundreds and thousands of prospects who want to know about what kind of offering we provide for the businesses. It is a great event to really meet our customers, get to know about new prospects, and partner up with a lot of vendors. All this happened in these five days and that’s why it’s very important for Zoho, and we are very much enjoying it.