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Zoho's strategy is this 1)Let others innovate, we will copy - Always copy the market leader. Anything that can be copied and built by using Java/MySQL and othe

Zoho's strategy is this 1)Let others innovate, we will copy - Always copy the market leader. Anything that can be copied and built by using Java/MySQL and other free software, they will attempt and flood the market. Let others innovate - Zoho has no patent/discovery to be proud of. They always wait for someone to start first, then piggyback on them. The breadcrumbs that are left by the master is more than enough for the puppy 2) Hire Cheap, Be cheap - Zoho hires school students and give them the ludicrous jobs - Help desk ticket assignment, routine jobs like build management etc. Less than 20% of the total school students hired are working in developmental activities. If you see Zoho's linked-in and facebook pages, they are advertising for fresh Engineers to join them. So what about the school students, CEO? 3)Pay Meager - Zoho's salary is very less compared to other product companies around, but marginally better than the consulting/services company. That way their cash reserves are huge. I assume around $50 million goes into cash reserves every year. 4) Zoho is controlled by Sridhar's family. All other founders have either been chucked out or been demoted. Such a frustration lead to the creation of freshdesk.com

slamped 13y ago
ah, ha.. I thought Zoho Creator, a drag and drop app/script builder (or Paas) was their unique idea. Am I misunderstood? ps: Zoho may prune the garden at any time too.
hackermann 13y ago
Some more facts about Zoho 1)Mangoes every year - The CEO has amassed so much wealth that he has bought a palatial home in US and estates in South India. Produce of those estates will be given to employees on subsidized rates. The better performer you are, the more mangoes you get. The employees just get to drool. 2)Zoho was earlier called AdventNet. To save tax, and also to chuck the original founders out, they have renamed it to Zoho. I guess there isn't any debris available of AdventNet anywhere (except in the package names of the java exceptions their products throw). 3) Free lunch - You will get free lunch everyday at Zoho. It means a lot to the poor school students they recruit. And last year, there was an Iphone/Ipad choice too. You need these freebies to get people glued in and forget the meager salary they get. 4) Criticize Criticize Criticize - Criticize your degree - Never mind it came from Princeton. That way you charm your fellow employees who then feels that their school leaving certificate is enough. You cite examples of Steve Jobs and Bill Gate and voila. Criticize your competitor (the original topic here) - Never mind what they innovated. That gives you some press coverage and publicity. 5) Family and Family rules - All of Sridhar's family is in this business, though none of the others have got his charisma. This has lead to the stagnation of other employees reaching the top. This is the secret behind they not advertising themselves. As the orginal founders have been chucked out, they know that this will lead to some conflict of interest.
cowls 13y ago
"Zoho hires school students and give them the ludicrous jobs - Help desk ticket assignment, routine jobs like build management etc" These jobs have to be done by someone.. I don't see why these jobs should be "below" school leavers. Hell, its a good place to start for them to gain some experience anyway.
lkozma 13y ago
You seem to have an axe to grind - almost all the points you mention (assuming they are true) can describe a well managed company, if you skip the negative spin.
- flyinRyan 13y ago
  well managed company? What he described is very nearly rent seeking. If a company is never innovating and always simply copying what everyone else does then that means that, 1) they will always be cheaper than their competitors and 2) if they ever completely win their market they will be stuck with the last iteration because they can't afford to innovate. People like to say a race for the bottom is good for consumers but it isn't. A race for the bottom is only good for people playing arbitrage games who know to get out before the bottom is reached.
  - sridharvembu 13y ago
    If your thesis is correct, the optimal strategy for us would be to sell when the prices are very high (like they are now) i.e collect the next 50 years of "rent" right now, because it is so readily available. Instead, we continually and steadily improve the product (while clearly acknowledging that we have much work to do). Don't you think that is an awful rent seeking strategy?
    - flyinRyan 13y ago
      It's amusing that you're defensive on this subject. Someone accused you of something, then another commenter said the described strategy was actually that of a well managed company. I explained the described strategy was very nearly rent seeking. So even though the thread started about your company, it became more general and that's when I stepped in. I wasn't talking about your company specifically because I don't even know what you do. But the fact that you're defensive enough to take my comment as an attack makes me wonder if the OP was actually close to the mark. :)
      - sridharvembu 13y ago
girishm 13y ago
I am the co-founder and CEO of freshdesk. I want to clarify here that I spent close to ten years at Zoho and I thoroughly enjoyed every bit of it. There was absolutely no frustration leading to the creation of freshdesk. Zoho has been a great place to experiment and learn and I owe a lot of what I learnt to Zoho. Regarding hiring school students, I think the media has hyped it beyond reality. I have seen first-hand on how it changes lives of kids who would otherwise have had no access to college education and would have been pushed into poverty. Having been a Senior manager at Zoho for several years I know that Zoho pays it's star performers reasonably well, but anyone who leaves Zoho always commands a premium in the market.(That speaks volumes about the quality of the experience that we pick up there)

slamped 13y ago

ah, ha.. I thought Zoho Creator, a drag and drop app/script builder (or Paas) was their unique idea. Am I misunderstood? ps: Zoho may prune the garden at any time too.

hackermann 13y ago

Some more facts about Zoho 1)Mangoes every year - The CEO has amassed so much wealth that he has bought a palatial home in US and estates in South India. Produce of those estates will be given to employees on subsidized rates. The better performer you are, the more mangoes you get. The employees just get to drool. 2)Zoho was earlier called AdventNet. To save tax, and also to chuck the original founders out, they have renamed it to Zoho. I guess there isn't any debris available of AdventNet anywhere (except in the package names of the java exceptions their products throw). 3) Free lunch - You will get free lunch everyday at Zoho. It means a lot to the poor school students they recruit. And last year, there was an Iphone/Ipad choice too. You need these freebies to get people glued in and forget the meager salary they get. 4) Criticize Criticize Criticize - Criticize your degree - Never mind it came from Princeton. That way you charm your fellow employees who then feels that their school leaving certificate is enough. You cite examples of Steve Jobs and Bill Gate and voila. Criticize your competitor (the original topic here) - Never mind what they innovated. That gives you some press coverage and publicity. 5) Family and Family rules - All of Sridhar's family is in this business, though none of the others have got his charisma. This has lead to the stagnation of other employees reaching the top. This is the secret behind they not advertising themselves. As the orginal founders have been chucked out, they know that this will lead to some conflict of interest.

cowls 13y ago

"Zoho hires school students and give them the ludicrous jobs - Help desk ticket assignment, routine jobs like build management etc" These jobs have to be done by someone.. I don't see why these jobs should be "below" school leavers. Hell, its a good place to start for them to gain some experience anyway.

lkozma 13y ago

You seem to have an axe to grind - almost all the points you mention (assuming they are true) can describe a well managed company, if you skip the negative spin.

flyinRyan 13y ago
well managed company? What he described is very nearly rent seeking. If a company is never innovating and always simply copying what everyone else does then that means that, 1) they will always be cheaper than their competitors and 2) if they ever completely win their market they will be stuck with the last iteration because they can't afford to innovate. People like to say a race for the bottom is good for consumers but it isn't. A race for the bottom is only good for people playing arbitrage games who know to get out before the bottom is reached.
- sridharvembu 13y ago
  If your thesis is correct, the optimal strategy for us would be to sell when the prices are very high (like they are now) i.e collect the next 50 years of "rent" right now, because it is so readily available. Instead, we continually and steadily improve the product (while clearly acknowledging that we have much work to do). Don't you think that is an awful rent seeking strategy?
  - flyinRyan 13y ago
    It's amusing that you're defensive on this subject. Someone accused you of something, then another commenter said the described strategy was actually that of a well managed company. I explained the described strategy was very nearly rent seeking. So even though the thread started about your company, it became more general and that's when I stepped in. I wasn't talking about your company specifically because I don't even know what you do. But the fact that you're defensive enough to take my comment as an attack makes me wonder if the OP was actually close to the mark. :)
    - sridharvembu 13y ago

girishm 13y ago

I am the co-founder and CEO of freshdesk. I want to clarify here that I spent close to ten years at Zoho and I thoroughly enjoyed every bit of it. There was absolutely no frustration leading to the creation of freshdesk. Zoho has been a great place to experiment and learn and I owe a lot of what I learnt to Zoho. Regarding hiring school students, I think the media has hyped it beyond reality. I have seen first-hand on how it changes lives of kids who would otherwise have had no access to college education and would have been pushed into poverty. Having been a Senior manager at Zoho for several years I know that Zoho pays it's star performers reasonably well, but anyone who leaves Zoho always commands a premium in the market.(That speaks volumes about the quality of the experience that we pick up there)