Amid the growing anti-immigration sentiments in the US, the H1B visa issues, and trade restrictions, the Indian Prime Minister has called for adopting a self-reliant approach. Since then, Zoho — a domestically built 1.5 billion-dollar software company has challenged the Microsoft publicly.
“We are the only company in the world that can take on Microsoft in the breadth and depth of the product suite. Our products offer a vastly superior experience to Microsoft. Please take a good look!” Sridhar Vembu announced on social media ‘X’.
Zoho offers nearly all the popular services currently provided by Google and Microsoft. Indian IT companies are already using Zoho for official work.
| Popular App/Tool | Zoho Equivalent |
| Google Sheets | Zoho Sheet |
| PowerPoint | Zoho Show |
| Word | Zoho Writer |
| Slack | Zoho Cliq |
| Salesforce | Zoho CRM |
| QuickBooks | Zoho Books |
| Dropbox / Google Drive | Zoho WorkDrive |
| HubSpot | Zoho Marketing Hub |
| Zoom | Zoho Meeting |
| Asana / Trello | Zoho Projects |
| LastPass | Zoho Vault |
| Canva | Zoho ShowTime + Zoho Social |
| Microsoft Teams | Zoho Connect |
| Chrome | Zoho Browser (Ulaa) |
| Gmail | Zoho Mail |
| WhatsApp / Signal | Zoho Arattai |
Zoho Arattai, the messaging app of Zoho, has recorded the highest downloads in the Play Store, becoming the number one app. The word Arattai, a Tamil word, means Casual Chat.
Zoho also has strong support from the government. India’s IT minister announced he has moved to Zoho. The minister said, “I am moving to Zoho — our own Swadeshi platform for documents, spreadsheets & presentations. I urge all to join PM Shri @narendramodi Ji’s call for Swadeshi by adopting indigenous products & services.”
Meanwhile, the sudden load on Zoho products in India left the company in a challenging situation. The Arattai app is facing some delays, and the company has clarified that it will be taken care of within 2-3 days as they are boosting the service infrastructure.
India is a 1.4 billion country. Zoho challenging Microsoft and Google means they will have to lose the market share to it. The rising tension between the US and India over trade and visas is likely to boost Zoho’s profile domestically in the coming days.
India is the backbone of the US IT and healthcare sector, as it has supplied engineers and doctors. However, the visa restrictions forced it to look inward — the domestic market, both for consumption and production.
Being the largest consumer market, re-routing the production in the domestic market is not likely to be a challenge for India. The country’s booming innovation and startup culture is expected to overcome the dependence on Western products.
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