Manama: Mahmood Rafique, Editor: Zoho, the global provider of cloud-based business software with the most extensive portfolio in the industry, will open an office in Bahrain in order to bolster its support to the start-ups and businesses across the board.
“Bahrain market has a lot of potential, we hope this year we can open an office here, and we have been working on couple of good initiatives, making sure that we will continue to helping Bahraini businesses,” Ali Shabdar, Regional Director, MEA, Zoho Corp, said.
Ali Shabdar, on the sidelines of an Iftar hosted by Zoho for its clients and partners at Crowne Plaza Hotel in Manama said, “Next year there will be good news for Bahrain.” While explaining the good news he described the opening of an office in Bahrain a step in the right direction which will reinforce Bahrain’s position as a key market for Zoho.
“Zoho has been supporting Bahrain either from its Dubai office or through partners some of them are present today IT companies accounting companies, or management consultant companies they offer services based on the Zoho solutions,” he said.
Zoho office in Bahrain, he says, it will also cover the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia as well, one of the largest economies in the region by using Bahrain as a gateway to $2trillion regional economy.
Talking about regional expansion, he said, Zoho is opening an office in Jeddah next months or two as it is almost ready. In addition, he said, Zoho is expanding its footprints in Africa with opening an office in Cape Town South Africa, and an office in Cairo Egypt.
“Between the 2019 and now we have increased the number of employees in Dubai office, now have 12 employees and though a tech company we are keeping very lean operation.” But, he explains, while everyone else was downsizing we were scaling up which is a good news as Zoho believes more partners, more staff and more business will help in managing to support customers.
“We have launched more apps to help businesses during pandemic and services have been available remotely for free globally. In a nutshell, Zoho unveiled ten applications for productivity, collaboration, communication and those can be used by up to 10 users completely free with full versions.
“It was a massive hit,” he said, adding that for example Zoho Creator allows to build application by itself.” “We allowed licenses for free for building applications for NGOs, and especially organisations those were dealing with the COVID-19 relief operations. We offered support to Zoho SMEs customers by waiving their some bills during the pandemic and we knew that cash flow was a problem for a lot of SMEs,” he added.
Talking about opening a Data Centre in Bahrain as had been announced previously he said it was still on the cards but this year Data Centre will be opened in the UAE. “Bahrain is still very important destination for setting up a data centre, we are hopeful to work on this project but due to the current situation no timeframe can be announced for this project.
“The infrastructure Bahrain is quite unique in the region, more transparency in rules and regulations, and economy is growing steadily, and Zoho will remain committed and a partner to businesses in Bahrain,” he said.
Talking about growth he emphasized it means better serving the customer base, in the recent past we have launched two applications principally for CRM, the accounting software, the marketing applications. “At Zoho how continue to serve the customers but physical growth into specific markets is a part of our vision called transnational localism means instead of centralizing into the US and India instead we open local offices which helps in understanding the local markets, creating local jobs, having closer connections with customers and partners all this helps to serve the customers in a better way.”
Zoho is one of the few tech companies which became completely remotely since the start of the pandemic and has had never disconnected from its businesses and customers. “We see Bahrain as a prime location for a Call Centre hopefully growing into that space as well as offering more training programmes, workshops for enabling the businesses and Bahrainis to develop further and taking them to the next level,” he said.
“Zoho celebrates 25 birthday as a startup, we want give these culture and tools to the startup community so that can remained focused on the core product they are in. Previously, Zoho has commended Bahrain’s start-up ecosystem and planning to open an office and data center in the Kingdom. “Flat6Lab strategic alliances Bahrain and Egypt will further help all business sectors which are covered by Zoho,” he said.
