SaaS company Zoho, on Tuesday, announced that it has crossed 100 million users across its expansive suite of 55+ business applications. Remarkably, Zoho achieved this milestone without external funding, making it the first self-funded SaaS company to do so. This achievement follows Zoho’s impressive accomplishment of reaching $1 billion in annual revenue last year.
“I want to thank all our customers for trusting us with their business and helping us reach 100 million users worldwide,” said Zoho’s co-founder and CEO, Sridhar Vembu, in a statement. “This is an impressive milestone for any organization, but is particularly sweet for us — a bootstrapped company that has never raised external capital.”
In recent years, Zoho Corp has experienced remarkable growth in both sales and user numbers. To put this into perspective, it achieved the milestone of one million users in 2008. Impressively, it added the last 50 million users in just the past five years.
Additionally, the company has made significant progress in the enterprise or “upmarket” segment in India, achieving a three-year Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 65 percent.
Unleashing Generative AI
Earlier this year, Zoho announced that it is doubling down on investment efforts in R&D, and expects to release more generative AI solutions in phases through 2023 and 2024.
Back in June, Zoho made an announcement regarding the development of its very own LLM. This project is being spearheaded by CEO Vembu and is being actively worked on by the company’s dedicated R&D team.
With the adoption of generative AI, Zoho was one of the few SaaS companies which didn’t lay off its employees. Zoho’s co-founder and CEO, Sridhar Vembu, emphasized on July 21 that AI will only replace specific job functions, not entire employees. “At Zoho, we hold the belief that AI can take over certain roles, but the significance of people remains unchanged. This perspective reflects the core philosophy of our organization,” Vembu had stated.
Challenging Times Ahead
OpenAI recently launched ChatGPT Enterprise. The company in their blog said that it comes with a new admin console that will let businesses manage team members easily and offers domain verification, SSO, and usage insights, allowing for large-scale deployment into enterprise. This development overlaps with services of many of the current SaaS companies who offer B2B offerings, including Zoho.
Only time will tell whether the introduction of ChatGPT Enterprise would potentially jeopardize Zoho’s survival, as OpenAI has stepped in to offer business solutions centered on ChatGPT.
