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Zoho Corporation, today officially opened its new office in Nairobi, its seventh office in the Middle East and Africa (MEA) region and partnered with the Institute for Small Business Initiatives (ISBI), which is part of Strathmore Business School (SBS) in a move to fuel the company’s upmarket momentum and meet the evolving needs of mid-market and enterprise customers.
According to Veerakumar Natarajan, Country Head – Kenya, Zoho Corp, “Our Nairobi office will enhance our account management capabilities and enable us to cater to the specific needs of large organisations. Staying true to our roots, we have also partnered with ISBI, in order to help SMEs and start-ups in Kenya gain access to enterprise technology, and gain a competitive edge and quickly adapt to the changing market landscape.”
Zoho also partnered with the Institute for Small Business Initiatives (ISBI) to digitalise the operations of the local SMEs by empowering them with the latest enterprise technology. As part of the partnership, all the SMEs that are or have ever been associated with ISBI will be granted access to Zoho One, a unified platform of 50+ business applications, that seamlessly connects diverse business functions including customer relationship management (CRM), finance, human resources, project management, collaboration, marketing, sales, and more.
This will enable SMEs to take their business operations online quickly, automate their processes, and manage their entire operations from a single unified console. Businesses in Nairobi that avail access to Zoho One will additionally receive tech support and product training to maximize the benefits of this collaboration.
“ISBI has been training over 1000 MSMEs in Kenya for the past 8 years. Our research-driven approach ensures successful outcomes in capacity building, as we advocate for enterprise formalization and provide effective management tools. Our results demonstrate significant improvements, including increased revenue, company value growth, and job creation. While manual data recording poses a challenge, we recognize digitization as the solution. Our partnership with Zoho supports SMEs through their diverse product portfolio. As the Director for Programs at ISBI, I am excited about our collaboration with Zoho and look forward to achieving further growth,” said Maryanne Akoth, Director for Programs, Institute for Small Business Initiatives.
Zoho has witnessed a three-year compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 65% in the mid-market and enterprise segment, which now represents one-third of the business. The company now boasts more than 90 million users across more than 600,000 global businesses of all sizes.