24 January 2024 04:28 am Views - 968
While different countries in the Asian region are at different levels when it comes to digital transformation, Sri Lanka is observed to be putting in “tremendous” efforts in this regard, which will pave the way for the island nation to reach its aspirations, a top executive of an India-based global technology company said.
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Gibu Mathew |
Noting there is good traction locally, Gibu Mathew, Vice President and General Manager for Asia Pacific of Zoho Corporation told Mirror Business that the island nation is on track in this regard.
“Digital transformation is a very big, lengthy process and we observe a lot of interest shown by various stakeholders for it in Sri Lanka. Many government services are going digital gradually,
and businesses will see more value as a result and that will drive the transformation efforts of ordinary businesses too,” Mathew added.
He shared these views earlier this week, on the sidelines of the media briefing held to announce Zoho Corporation’s first user conference that convened in Colombo at Shangri-La Hotel yesterday, themed ‘Zoholics’.
The Indian tech professional also had high praise for the skills demonstrated by Sri Lankan software developers who have a good demand and are recognised globally.
“They are actually very good. They can contribute immensely towards the country’s digitalisation drive. We have the Zoho eco system of developers and many Sri Lankan software developers are engaged in it,” he said.
When questioned on the possibility of expanding Zoho’s footprint to Sri Lanka, Mathew noted it is on the cards.
“It is something definitely we are looking at, though we don’t have any specific plans at the moment. Right now we are going through partners here, and we are supporting them. We see our partners increasing their staff strength in relation to the demand for our products, which is a good development. We already got a good customer base in Sri Lanka,” he said. Zoho is the first bootstrapped SaaS company to reach the global milestone of 100 million users, which comes on the heels of the company reaching 1 billion in annual revenue last year.
With 55 plus apps in nearly every major business category, the company says the Sri Lankan market has been led by strong growth in demand for Zoho Workplace, an integrated productivity suite, Zoho CRM, a customer management solution, as well as Zoho Recruit, a recruitment platform.
The over-subscribed event that kicked off yesterday covered solutions from sales and marketing to collaboration, HR and developer tools. Zoho’s user conference is a key opportunity for the company to educate Sri Lankan businesses about their software solutions.