Zoho – Built without venture capital funding

There is an interesting story titled “Want to build a billion dollar organisation without VC money? Learn from Sridhar Vembu” on yourstory.com. yourstory.com, is a platform where Startups can share their experience and knowledge. Although Zoho is far from being a startup! Zoho was founded in 1996, although at the time it was called AdventNet Technologies. Sridhar Vembu, CEO of Zoho, bought the domain name zoho.com in 2004 and subsequently re-branded AdventNet Technologies to Zoho. Today:

  • Zoho is approaching $500 million in revenues
  • Zoho has over 100,000  paying businesses and 18 million individual users.
  • Zoho has plans to sign up one million enterprises in three years
  • Currently, Zoho is experimenting with over 100 different new products

“Readily deployable IT is the future,” says Sridhar. But there is more to Zoho than just productivity tools for the office. Its Manage Engine software suite manages network nodes of enterprises, and its WebNMS platform is building Internet of Things (IoT) applications for industry.

Being an IT veteran, Sridhar Vembu believes startups in the B2B business should focus on building businesses without any funding, and they should learn to make customers pay for the services they deliver. He also believes a bigger global financial meltdown is around the corner and that funding could dry up soon.

Read the full article “Want to build a billion dollar organisation without VC money? Learn from Sridhar Vembu” on yourstory.com