Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Zoho is attracting the attention of African startup founders

restofworld.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 213 posts

Re: Zoho is attracting the attention of African startup founders

#91

Post by seanmcdirmid »

FrustratedMonky wrote: post #68
hilux wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

56% of Apple's revenue is from outside the US. 38% of Boeing's revenue is from outside the US. 58% of Caterpillar's revenue is from outside the US. (Those are the first three companies I checked.) If American companies took the attitude "America #1, we don't need foreign customers," I don't think you would like the impact the resulting revenue loss would have on the American economy.

But overall total trade deficit is still lopsided correct? I'm all for increasing exports. What markets are untapped where something could be made in US and exported.

Apple doesn’t make much hardware in the USA anymore, so you have to count the software and hardware IP from the actually hardware/finished product, so accounting what percent of value for an iPhone is generated in China/other countries vs the USA. For Boeing it’s slightly easier, but they also have an international supply chain.

Re: Zoho is attracting the attention of African startup founders

#92

Post by mistrial9 »

hilux wrote: post #10
_chu1 wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

56% of Apple's revenue is from outside the US. 38% of Boeing's revenue is from outside the US. 58% of Caterpillar's revenue is from outside the US. (Those are the first three companies I checked.) If American companies took the attitude "America #1, we don't need foreign customers," I don't think you would like the impact the resulting revenue loss would have on the American economy.

> on the American economy

looks upward for the trickling down implied here

Re: Zoho is attracting the attention of African startup founders

#93

Post by flyinglizard »

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.

Would you trade geopolitical places with China?

Re: Zoho is attracting the attention of African startup founders

#94

Post by seanmcdirmid »

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.

This is why China is investing so heavily in EVs and green energy. They don’t want to have to go to war over oil in the future, and they would rather be immune to oil price fluctuations. Same with imported coal and natural gas. It is just as much about national security as it is about environment.

The USA could do the same, but it produces a lot of oil and gas so there is more resistance against it. But they make those a part of the world market, so whenever Russia or the Middle East go nuts, the price of oil rises and affects consumers at home as well as allies, and we feel compelled to be implied militarily.

Re: Zoho is attracting the attention of African startup founders

#95

Post by lupusreal »

alephnerd wrote: post #15
itikasp wrote: post #13

Earlier 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.

How hard could it be for a company as large as Google to hire a few dozen lawyers and accountants in every country they're able to do business in?

Re: Zoho is attracting the attention of African startup founders

#96

Post by alephnerd »

chucke1992 wrote: post #87
alephnerd wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> those can afford expensive stuff, but western stuff anyway

Western, sure. American, not really.

There's a reason American brands like Harley-Davidson and Ford quit India, but Western (NATO+) brands like Toyota and Hyundai thrive in India, and Indian conglomerates like Tata acquired prestige western brands like Jaguar Land Rover.

Same thing with China and the acquisition of MG, Volvo, Lotus, etc.

> 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.

True, but there needs to be a middle path between being selective but also attracting the cream of the crop. Take a look at the placement statistics of IIT graduates nowadays (2017 onwards) - barely 5-10% choose to immigrate abroad now, ad it's a similar trend in mid-tier Indian programs as well.

America's innovation ecosystem only worked because we were able to attract the best and the brightest from Russia, India, China, etc. Without that level of openness, we fall to the same pit of stagnation that Mainland Europe, the UK, and Japan fell into.

------

Both these points are examples of the insular mindset that is going to doom the US. There is this assumption that we have always been the best and always will be the best.

It was immigrants or the children of immigrants like Oppenheimer, Lawrence, Fermi, von Neumann, etc that ushered the Atomic and Information Age, and it was immigrants like Hinton, le Cunn, Bengio, etc that ushered in the current ML revolution.

Already, a lot of my Chinese and Indian friends who did their PhDs in EE or CS at programs like Stanford or MIT have started returning to China and India because they find the visa process demeaning and very backlogged.

Re: Zoho is attracting the attention of African startup founders

#98

Post by isodev »

infecto wrote: post #59
isodev wrote: post #53

Ok, but can Zoho offer things like HIPPA compliance or “EU only” hosting and services for data protection? Kudos to businesses who can make use of this Zoho in a safe way but one would hate to expose one’s users to a company based in some strange dictatorship of a country.

I think it took longer for you to write that post than to just do the search. https://www.zoho.com/crm/hipaa/ https://www.zoho.com/gdpr.html https://www.zoho.com/know-your-datacenter.html On the flip side I have known of Zoho for at least a decade, they are not a new player..I never realized they were an Indian company.

Good catch, I did a search but none of these were in the top results for me (I guess that's the state of search these days).

My main point however was that India doesn't have an agreement with the EU regarding the transfer and protection of personal data (e.g. the EU-US Privacy Shield and related). So while the links above state how much Zoho cares about privacy, the platform is not suitable for use-cases including personal information.

Re: Zoho is attracting the attention of African startup founders

#99

Post by beezlebroxxxxxx »

max_ wrote: post #88

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 Camp…

I'm sure you're aware, but you have to be careful with being very reliant on free-tier products. Once a magnitude of people are "locked in" then they'll start to do some of the pricing and licensing shenanigans where once common features or bundled products get hidden under a fee or broken up after an update.

(Interesting project BTW, I'd just recommend having a screenshot or 2 of one of the resumes if you're explicitly advertising them as beautiful. Calling them that is one thing, but showing people that is much better.)

Re: Zoho is attracting the attention of African startup founders

#100

Post by insane_dreamer »

resolutebat wrote: post #71
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…

Many people thought Alicloud would eat AWS/Azure/GCP's lunch in the developing world, since they expanded really fast and priced aggressively. But there's a limit to what even extremely price-conscious customers will accept, and their service quality and support was just not up to scratch. Chinese manufacturers are steadily creeping upmarket though: Haier, BYD, Xiaomi, DJI, Anker etc are all producing increasingly so…

Those companies you listed, especially DJI and Anker, are the exception rather than the rule. In my experience living there for 6 years, Chinese companies at all levels tend to cut corners too easily and focus on short-term profits. Very few are capable or willing to put in what it takes to establish a brand that can compete with Western brands. DJI was helped by being in a relatively new market without long-establish brands, Anker to a similar extent (and also produces less expensive products). It's much easier to buy a foreign brand (like Geely with Volvo) than to try to establish your own brand internationally. Even huge companies like BYD, Huawai, and Xiomi (smaller but very popular in China) have not made headway except in less developed countries.
Post reply on HN