I think I may have heard of Zoho once, as a South African dev. My employers have all used either Microsoft or Google office suites. South Africa might have better access/relative pricing to U.S. services than some other African countries though.
Zoho is attracting the attention of African startup founders
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Re: Zoho is attracting the attention of African startup founders
#32Zoho is a major player in the industry being direct competitor to small business. They are also bootstrapped.
> bootstraped i think they got a big injection when yahoo bought them, tried to dogfood in lieu of exchange, failed and sold for pennies back to the founders
When did this happen? I just couldn't find any links. Is it Zoho or Zimbra?
Re: Zoho is attracting the attention of African startup founders
#33> 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.
If you want to grow, you target customers, not Americans or American customers.
Re: Zoho is attracting the attention of African startup founders
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
What mistake did Japan make btw?
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Only made them a top 5 economy with a tiny population, few natural resources and little to no land.
Sounds like being a U.S. vassal state is an excellent place to be.
Which is actually truer than one may think. Most U.S. “vassal states” do excellently, including much of Europe, Israel, Saudi Arabia, etc.
The primary reason behind that is they are not vassal states. The U.S. doesn’t have vassal states (outside of maybe Puerto Rico) and yes it has expectations of its allies but those are surprisingly low compared to even the shitties states to be vassals of. Compare what the U.S. expects of Saudi Arabia or Japan (what impositions does it place?) to what Russia expects of its vassal states (many of which it has literally taken over by force), or China (look at what China is doing to BRI countries like Pakistan and Sri Lanka…hollowing their economy out and getting paid for the privilege…) or even India (which has gone on an all out economic war against Mauritius because a couple of clowns in their government said something they didn’t like).
Heck, even to the extent China or India are succeeding economically it’s because of the U.S. economic ties. China is almost entirely built by American investment over the past few decades. And even the subject of this specific story, Zoho, part of the Indian IT ecosystem, is entirely a result of US economic partnership starting in the 90s.
It’s not an exaggeration to say that American “vassal statehood” is literally the only path to economic success and prosperity since WW2.
Re: Zoho is attracting the attention of African startup founders
#35> 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.
Zoho (or whatever payment processor they use) has to handle N countries, which is easier than having multiple companies from different countries handling payment in foreign currencies.
Living in Europe, it is easy for us to pay USD-centric services in dollars instead of EUR. But I remember it being almost impossible at the companies I worked at, when I was in Latin America.
Re: Zoho is attracting the attention of African startup founders
#36> 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.
Presumably they could convert that local currency to Indian rupees directly without ever needing to go through USD, avoiding regulatory hurdles.
Re: Zoho is attracting the attention of African startup founders
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
> A company like GOOG can't justify using a product like Razorpay that is directly competing with internal platforms.
This does seem silly, though, even though it's probably already obvious to say. If they want to build something, and why not, build an integrating service over the top of that one and the internal ones, and figure out how to select the one to use based on the currency/location/etc.
Re: Zoho is attracting the attention of African startup founders
#38> 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…
Frankly it is simply the US dollar being overvalued. It is making US exports way too expensive for most of the world. Google can't really compete and make any money.
That is definitely a factor. ZIRP from 2008-2015 and 2020-2022 will do some damage to exports.
Re: Zoho is attracting the attention of African startup founders
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
> A company like GOOG can't justify using a product like Razorpay that is directly competing with internal platforms. This does seem silly, though, even though it's probably already obvious to say. If they want to build something, and why not, build an integrating service over the top of that one and the internal ones, and figure out how to select the one to use based on the currency/location/etc.
No company ever pays a competitor.
It's partially for financial reasons (why should I pay you to undermine my lead) as well as competitive (the competitor can extrapolate our own internal trends, and then potentially use it against us in competitive deals).
This is why Walmart is famous for forcing every single one of it's vendors not use Amazon services in a Walmart related SKU (eg. If I'm selling a SaaS to Walmart, I either need to migrate the Walmart portion to GCP or Azure, or not get the Walmart contract).
Re: Zoho is attracting the attention of African startup founders
#40I had Zoho set up on the lowest tier for a side-hustle project years ago. It did it's job smoothly and without much intrusion. Then the project ended and I forgot about the Zoho account, changed phone numbers, lost the 2fa keys - all of it. Totally my fault. Their support quickly and competently handheld me through the shutdown process. I can't imagine the nightmare Google would've forced me through to shut down a pointless 3$/month charge had I made the same mistake with them.