By Hamed Mahmoud
Zoho Corp, a global technology company offering the most extensive suite of business software applications in the industry and catering to over 60 million customers globally, announce in an exclusive interview with The Egyptian Gazette newspaper that it will open its first North African regional office located in New Cairo, Egypt this month.
Commenting on this occasion, Mr Ali Shabdar, Regional Director – MEA, Zoho Corp, said: “We are happy to launch our first North African office in Egypt, which is a very important market for us in the entire Middle East and Africa region. This is strategic for us globally as well. Egypt has a very big population of about 100 million people, 60 per cent of them are young, making it a very interesting country for us to expand to, especially with the recent developments and expansions happening in the country. So, we want to be a part of that story and journey as well.”
“Zoho’s expansion in Egypt has started from last year, where the company had its first user conference, with participations from a lot of customers, partners, and enthusiasts. So, this year, we will take the next step to open our office in the New Cairo in the 5th settlement, which will be opened during March 2021. The opening of this office shows the importance of Egypt in North Africa for us. Through this office, we will also serve our Egyptian clients, increase our sales and help our partners as well as the community be better with digital transformation,” he added.
It is worth mentioning that Zoho Corp started 25 years ago as a very small IT company with limited number of engineers. Zoho grew from a small company to one of the global technology leaders today with more than 9000 employees and 60 million users across the globe. Zoho has a strong presence everywhere, with 10 offices across the world. Zoho has built almost 50 applications to offer a complete platform of software for businesses, where they can run their entire business by only using our software.
Zoho has kept its culture of not just making money but also about serving the community and taking care of its employees and customers. Zoho’s customers range from SMEs, to big corporations and government and semi – government entities.
Mr. Shabdar elaborated, “Zoho also tries to help Egyptian youth to build a future for themselves, and learn more about technology, so they become able to build technology and offer it not only to their country but to the rest of the region as well.”
Commenting on the strategies of Zoho in Egypt, Mr Shabdar said: “We believe in sustainable expansion, which means that we have to also give back to the community. Our Cairo office is just the beginning, as we have plans to increase its space in the coming years and grow our team and expand our partners of local Egyptian IT, management, and consulting companies that will be offering services based on technological solutions from Zoho. We will also be looking forward to working with government and semi-government clients as well to make sure that we expand in a more sustainable way in Egypt. In addition to this, we will focus on building more applications that are required and needed by the local businesses in the region”.
“Startups are very important for Zoho as they represent the future of the economy, technology and other areas, and that is why we were keen on having a partnership with “Flat 6 labs”, which gives us the ability to help the start-up community of Egypt by not only offering them the software so they can run their business but also helping them in trainings and workshops”, he pointed out.
Mr Shabdar concluded that Zoho is always looking for partnerships in Egypt, with not only start-up entities but also with private and public sectors, in the areas of economy, education and other vital sector, in order to help in job creation in the Egyptian market. These partnerships would also help us serve our customers and the community better”.
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