Zoho Co-Founder Clarifies: All Products Developed in India with Domestic Data Hosting

Sridhar Vembu, co-founder of Zoho Corp, has addressed various misconceptions regarding the company's data hosting, development processes, and global operations through a comprehensive social media post. He emphasized that all Zoho products are developed in India, with the company paying taxes on its worldwide revenue within the country.

In his clarification post, Mr. Vembu stated, "There are questions about where Zoho is developed and where the data is hosted, and who hosts it. There is a lot of false information we want to correct. Our global headquarters is in Chennai, and we pay taxes in India on our global income. As a global corporation headquartered in India, we have offices in over 80 countries and have a strong presence in the US, which is a big market for us."

Mr. Vembu further explained that Indian customer data is hosted domestically in Mumbai, Delhi, and Chennai data centers, with plans for expansion to Odisha in the near future. Zoho maintains more than 18 data centers globally, each responsible for hosting respective country or regional data to ensure compliance with local jurisdictional requirements.

The company operates all its services on proprietary hardware and software frameworks developed in-house using open-source platforms such as Linux operating system and Postgres database. Contrary to some rumors, Zoho does not host its products on third-party cloud services like Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, or Google Cloud.

Specifically addressing misinformation about Zoho's messaging app Arattai, Mr. Vembu clarified, "Arattai, specifically, is not hosted on AWS or Azure or GCloud." He explained that while some public cloud services utilize switching nodes to accelerate regional traffic, no customer data is stored in these nodes, adding that Zoho is expanding these "points of presence" (POPs).

Regarding the developer account listing a US address in app stores, Mr. Vembu explained that this was registered during the early days of these platforms by a US-based employee for testing purposes and was never updated.

Mr. Vembu concluded his statement by emphasizing Zoho's commitment to being "Made in India, Made for the World."

Notably, Zoho's home-grown messaging app Arattai, launched in 2021, has recently experienced extraordinary growth, with daily sign-ups increasing 100-fold from 3,000 to 350,000 within just three days in late September. This remarkable surge briefly propelled Arattai to the top position in India's app store rankings, surpassing established competitors including WhatsApp, Telegram, and Signal.