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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

#81

Post by StefanBatory »

high_na_euv wrote: post #4
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…

Not only currency, but Albo outdated payment methods like credit card or PayPal only? What?? Srsly? What about other robust methods like https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blik

The price of being first - you are much slower to make any new changes.

I'm Polish, our internet infrastructure is miles better than German. Paying via phone is norm. Were I cross the German border, I'd think it's a museum.

But we didn't do anything particularly right. We just could implement our infrastructure on the newest ideas, while for Germany they're stuck with what they had as pioneers.

Re: Zoho is attracting the attention of African startup founders

#82

Post by ctm92 »

m_fayer wrote: post #40

I 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 po…

I used ManageEngine MDM before, which belongs to Zoho. The support is excellent, even though I was only using the free tier, they did everything to assist me. Open the support chat, one minute later you are chatting with a human (!), not some robot that you have to trick to eventually speak to someone.

Re: Zoho is attracting the attention of African startup founders

#84

Post by alephnerd »

sofixa wrote: post #73
alephnerd wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

European regulators talk big, but European companies (German+French) have really horrid internal security practices. I don't want to name names as it can affect me professionally, but I would never trust a European (German+French) digital platform developed by one of their traditional conglomerates - even a stereotypically non-technical American F500 like Home Depot has way better technical and security practices tha…

If we're sharing anecadata, I've interacted professionally with organisations of all sizes and types (from startups to big banks to public sector) from all around the world, and I strongly disagree. Legacy companies exist everywhere. Big banks with weird "security" practices exist everywhere. There's nothing special about French or German companies' digital security. If anything, they're often better than American on…

I wasn't talking about European financial companies - they're actually pretty decent at security because European financial regulators actually have teeth, and the internal platforms for a Deustche Bank or BNP Paribas are fairly forward facing (or at least as forward facing as very large and old conglomerates can be).

The companies I'd be worried about are outside the financial sector. I know it's all anecdotal so we're just randos on the internet yelling at each other, but actual enforcement of European data and security regulations (outside of the financial sector) are minimal, and more critically, very basic platform security practices haven't percolated.

That said, I can safely say that Equifax has completely revamped their infra to prevent a leak like the one they previously faced. They had a complete rearchitecture and heads rolled.

Re: Zoho is attracting the attention of African startup founders

#85

Post by alephnerd »

jlangenauer wrote: post #80
alephnerd wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The exact same mistakes as Japan - deciding to concentrate on their large local market which is protected via tariffs, but then completely outsourcing IP in non-target markets via JVs (eg. Renault's JVs in India, Volkswagen's JVs in China, Dassault and Thales JVs in India, Airbus JVs in China), but also failing to attract enough talent from abroad to innovate in these countries. The Eurozone crisis also completely de…

This is not exactly the fault of VW/Renault etc. China has quite explicitly encouraged technology transfer as an important strategic imperative for their local firms, so if these companies wanted to play in the (obviously growing) Chinese market, technology transfer was the price to be paid. (Another example of this is the high-speed trains in China - the first generation was built by JVs with Siemens/Hitachi/etc wit…

And they're doing the same in India.

There's a reason I mentioned Renault and Dassault - to show that it's not just a China thing.

Every country pushes for JVs, but it's up to the individual companies themselves to defend their IP, or at least integrate the host country's talent base with the home country's innovation system so that it's mutually beneficial (eg. What Japanese companies did in Korea in the 1970s-80s).

American companies do that (eg. L1/2 transfers and O-1 visas) but European and Japanese companies don't as often.

Re: Zoho is attracting the attention of African startup founders

#86

Post by sofixa »

alephnerd wrote: post #84
sofixa wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we're sharing anecadata, I've interacted professionally with organisations of all sizes and types (from startups to big banks to public sector) from all around the world, and I strongly disagree. Legacy companies exist everywhere. Big banks with weird "security" practices exist everywhere. There's nothing special about French or German companies' digital security. If anything, they're often better than American on…

I wasn't talking about European financial companies - they're actually pretty decent at security because European financial regulators actually have teeth, and the internal platforms for a Deustche Bank or BNP Paribas are fairly forward facing (or at least as forward facing as very large and old conglomerates can be). The companies I'd be worried about are outside the financial sector. I know it's all anecdotal so we…

And I'm not talking about financial sector exclusively either. All sorts of companies, even centuries old ones, are taking security seriously and even if there often is lots of legacy stuff, there's no material differences with Indonesian or American or Brazilian companies

Re: Zoho is attracting the attention of African startup founders

#87

Post by chucke1992 »

alephnerd wrote: post #70
infecto wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not so sure how much of your post really applies to this scenario. Zoho has been around practically for as long as Salesforce has and they have always been the scrappy bootstrapped company that in my opinion focused on the small to medium sized business. MSFT is at such a large size that tailoring the selling experience to a smaller market does not move the needle enough to make a difference for the business. Wi…

Zoho would have been American if Sridhar's visa process wasn't messed up. He used to live in Pleasanton like the rest of the Zoho founders, but they were looking at a multiyear GC backlog, so Sridhar decided to return to India. I'd argue it's one of several pieces that show an issue of insular pigheadedness American institutions have. This was fine when the rest of the world was much poorer than the US, but that delt…

The thing is that with India - for example - it is a relatively cheap market and those can afford expensive stuff, but western stuff anyway.

Also regarding visa - well there are more indians in the visa queue than probably multiple countries combined. If they make it as fast as other countries - indians will just move in millions and millions simply due to sheer amount of people they have.

Re: Zoho is attracting the attention of African startup founders

#88

Post by max_ »

I am an African based in Uganda and I am currently working on my project https://labour.quest

I wanted to start by using Google Workplace. But then switched to Zoho for the generous free tier.

I am so glad I did. Zoho has so many tools that a project needs to run "built in".

For example I was thinking of signing up for the services below but Zoho already had these built in.

SendGrid - Zepto Mail MailChimp - Zoho Campaigns Email - Zoho Emails

Not to mention many other tools like CRMs

It's a real "batteries included" service for email & communication.

Re: Zoho is attracting the attention of African startup founders

#89

Post by dash2 »

GenerWork wrote: post #76
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…

>A weaker America opens political vacuums from the Red Sea to Central Africa to Myanmar. I'm 100% OK with this. If we need to become weaker in order to shrink the size of our military, then we should do exactly that.

The resulting global conflicts will be painful for everyone, including the US itself.

Re: Zoho is attracting the attention of African startup founders

#90

Post by inemesitaffia »

GenerWork wrote: post #76
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…

>A weaker America opens political vacuums from the Red Sea to Central Africa to Myanmar. I'm 100% OK with this. If we need to become weaker in order to shrink the size of our military, then we should do exactly that.

Deterrence is better than response. See Yemen
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