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Zoho is attracting the attention of African startup founders

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Re: Zoho is attracting the attention of African startup founders

#11

Post by hilux »

mionhe wrote: post #6
alephnerd wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By becoming completely insular, you lose the ability to innovate, as you cater to a subset of consumers and as such aren't being pushed to test the limits of the existing status quo. For example, look at what happened to Sony - they were a darling of the Consumer Technology space and the Apple of the 1990s-early 2000s, but because they concentrating on the Japanese market at the expense of the global market, they fel…

I think the key word there was 'primary'. I think it's okay to have a main audience in mind that isn't the entire world.

Did you read the article? The whole point is that African companies are replacing GOOG and MSFT with Zoho because Zoho is more responsive to their needs.

Increasingly, American companies cannot expect to succeed internationally on the strength of brand alone, if they are not willing to customize their product and service offerings to meet local requirements.

Re: Zoho is attracting the attention of African startup founders

#12

Post by anthonygd »

alephnerd wrote: post #7
mionhe wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the key word there was 'primary'. I think it's okay to have a main audience in mind that isn't the entire world.

Primary implies the lack of localization, and localization is a critical piece of innovation, as it forces you to consider additional user experience enhancements. From a typography standpoint, think about how you would represent Hudum versus Latin fonts on a mobile app or PWA now that Mongolia is deprecating Cyrillic script. On the Cloud side, a lot of major K8s orchestration and edge computing innovations were spar…

> Primary implies the lack of localization

No, it doesn't.

Re: Zoho is attracting the attention of African startup founders

#13

Post by itikasp »

alephnerd wrote: post #2

> Zoho started allowing African companies to pay for its software in local currencies. This decision has been a major reason for Zoho’s success in Africa as it allowed customers and potential clients to avoid regulatory hurdles around dollar spending > Zoho has also been aggressive with its pricing in Africa. Zoho One, a bundle of more than 45 products This is a major reason why Western products aren't landing as wel…

Hello alephnerd, Loved reading your insights. I am one of the editors of this story, and I was surprised when the reporters told me that most other tools (Google and Microsoft) did not allow African entrepreneurs to pay in local currencies. That does seem like something that can be easily fixed, if there's will. Here's hoping that all global companies make the playing field even for all global entrepreneurs.

Re: Zoho is attracting the attention of African startup founders

#14

Post by alephnerd »

anthonygd wrote: post #12
alephnerd wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Primary implies the lack of localization, and localization is a critical piece of innovation, as it forces you to consider additional user experience enhancements. From a typography standpoint, think about how you would represent Hudum versus Latin fonts on a mobile app or PWA now that Mongolia is deprecating Cyrillic script. On the Cloud side, a lot of major K8s orchestration and edge computing innovations were spar…

> Primary implies the lack of localization No, it doesn't.

It absolutely does as a PM or EM.

If my feature's primary market is the US, I'm not going to prioritize Japanese localization or GDPR compliance. Those two epics will remain in the backlog until a sufficiently large enough opportunity arises to justify a pivot to meet those feature requests.

I am not going to justify limited engineering resources to localization if the localization isn't aimed at my primary market.

This is why GOOG or MSFT haven't prioritized building billing infrastructure for Naira, but something a company like Zoho absolutely can.

My hunch is Zoho is using Razorpay (YC W15) for payments, and Razorpay has been pivoting to support the Africa and ASEAN markets (like most Indian companies have been for decades).

Re: Zoho is attracting the attention of African startup founders

#15

Post by alephnerd »

itikasp wrote: post #13
alephnerd wrote: post #2

> Zoho started allowing African companies to pay for its software in local currencies. This decision has been a major reason for Zoho’s success in Africa as it allowed customers and potential clients to avoid regulatory hurdles around dollar spending > Zoho has also been aggressive with its pricing in Africa. Zoho One, a bundle of more than 45 products This is a major reason why Western products aren't landing as wel…

Hello alephnerd, Loved reading your insights. I am one of the editors of this story, and I was surprised when the reporters told me that most other tools (Google and Microsoft) did not allow African entrepreneurs to pay in local currencies. That does seem like something that can be easily fixed, if there's will. Here's hoping that all global companies make the playing field even for all global entrepreneurs.

My hunch is Zoho is using Razorpay (YC W15) internally for payments.

A company like GOOG can't justify using a product like Razorpay that is directly competing with internal platforms.

> That does seem like something that can be easily fixed

It's a very hard problem due to KYC, AML, and a multitude of other compliance and legal headaches. That's why Stripe and Razorpay can justify multi-billion dollar valuations.

Re: Zoho is attracting the attention of African startup founders

#16

Post by delfinom »

_chu1 wrote: post #3
alephnerd wrote: post #2

> Zoho started allowing African companies to pay for its software in local currencies. This decision has been a major reason for Zoho’s success in Africa as it allowed customers and potential clients to avoid regulatory hurdles around dollar spending > Zoho has also been aggressive with its pricing in Africa. Zoho One, a bundle of more than 45 products This is a major reason why Western products aren't landing as wel…

I'm completely OK with American brands making Americans their primary target again.

Americans are out of money and wall street needs to keep the ponzi of infinite growth going.

Re: Zoho is attracting the attention of African startup founders

#17

Post by derelicta »

alephnerd wrote: post #2

> Zoho started allowing African companies to pay for its software in local currencies. This decision has been a major reason for Zoho’s success in Africa as it allowed customers and potential clients to avoid regulatory hurdles around dollar spending > Zoho has also been aggressive with its pricing in Africa. Zoho One, a bundle of more than 45 products This is a major reason why Western products aren't landing as wel…

What mistake did Japan make btw?

Re: Zoho is attracting the attention of African startup founders

#19

Post by nitwit005 »

> Zoho started allowing African companies to pay for its software in local currencies. This decision has been a major reason for Zoho’s success in Africa as it allowed customers and potential clients to avoid regulatory hurdles around dollar spending

One wonders what they're going to do with the local currency, if they presumably also have to deal with the same restrictions.

Re: Zoho is attracting the attention of African startup founders

#20

Post by bdjsiqoocwk »

_chu1 wrote: post #3
alephnerd wrote: post #2

> Zoho started allowing African companies to pay for its software in local currencies. This decision has been a major reason for Zoho’s success in Africa as it allowed customers and potential clients to avoid regulatory hurdles around dollar spending > Zoho has also been aggressive with its pricing in Africa. Zoho One, a bundle of more than 45 products This is a major reason why Western products aren't landing as wel…

I'm completely OK with American brands making Americans their primary target again.

This is loser talk.
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