Indian-based technology firm Zoho Corporation will officially open its second office on South African shores in the first quarter of 2023.
Ali Shabdar, regional director for Middle East and Africa (MEA) at Zoho, made the announcement yesterday on the sidelines of the company’s annual user conference, Zoholics: South Africa.
The new office, to be located in Johannesburg, will be its second office in the country, after it opened its flagship office on the continent in Cape Town last year.
“We’re finally coming to Johannesburg,” he commented. “It’s long overdue. We’ll be opening another office in Johannesburg…expect it to be launched officially in Q1 of next year.
“We’re excited about this and definitely think South Africa deserves two offices for us to operate in.”
Headquartered in Chennai, Zoho is an Indian multinational technology firm that offers web-based business tools.
According to Zoho, more than 500 000 organisations of varying sizes and industries rely on it for help with their business operations and digitalising their entire business.
The 26-year-old tech platform has grown from a handful of applications a decade ago, to 55 cloud-based applications, Shabdar noted.
In SA, Zoho’s workforce comprises of 15 staff members providing services from the Cape Town office. For its Johannesburg office, the business will start with five or six more people, according to Shabdar.
“We will be hiring both in Cape Town and Johannesburg. The hiring will be in sales, pre-sales, support and across the board where we’ll need to strengthen the presence of the team.”
Teaming up for training
In terms of growth in MEA, the company saw five times adoption growth in four years in the region. In 2020, revenue grew by 29%, and reached 52% growth last year, Shabdar revealed.
Furthermore, it tripled its workforce in the region in the last year, with teams stationed in offices across eight countries.
“South Africa is number two for us among 83 countries in Middle East and Africa. It comes right after the United Arab Emirates, which is our most mature market.
“After that we have Israel, which is smaller but very mature in terms of business and technology, and then Saudi Arabia, which has the highest potential of growth. However, I’d say for the past three years, South Africa has been number two.”
He added that the new user adoption rate grew by 75%.
Andrew Bourne, regional manager for Zoho Africa, noted it has entered into a strategic alliance with the Institute of African Royalty, a start-up and SME incubator.
“We have joined forces with other institutions to offer young people tools, training and consultation on what businesses they want to build, or how they would like to upskill themselves.
“This is a very exciting project for us. There’s going to be more than 500 of these young individuals that we’re going to be sponsoring over the next 12 months, and we’re going to do a 12-month programme of training and upskilling.”
The Cape Town office offers a training space, Shabdar said, adding that at least 30% to 50% of the firm’s office spaces are often dedicated to training made available to customers and partners.
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