BENGALURU, OCT 9 : Zoho Corp CEO Sridhar Vembu on Monday gave a mantra of building domestic capabilities and adopting Tenkasi model of jobs-near-home in India to address the impending oil price surge and economic slowdown due to the ongoing Israel-Palestine war.

“In this time of crisis. What can we do? What must we do? We must invest in building power capabilities in India. The Ukraine war is already underway and added to it yet another war going on in the Middle East. This will impact oil prices in the coming days.

“To fend this off, focus must be on renewable energy. We must build solar power capabilities, and we as a company are doing our part in this regard. We are investing in batteries. We cannot predict what happens globally, but at least we can build domestic capabilities,” he said replying to an UNI query here.

Amidst the Israel-Palestine war, the US crude futures surged above $86 a barrel, at one point rallying 5.4%.

Vembu also proposed adoption of the Tenkasi model to address repercussions of the Israel-Palestine war across India. The philosophy of Tenkasi model is of setting up a strong army of centres specialising in products in every district of the country and providing jobs to the local talents.

“I see India as 830+ districts. Each of these districts have a substantial potential. I want to set up a very strong army of centres specialising in products in every district across India and provide jobs to the local talent, instead of shifting them to other places.

“At least, there will be 5,000 spots in every district, maybe 200, or 500. This will build resilience. I think this model (Tenkasi model) should be adopted nationally. We as Zoho Corp are doing this on our part,” he said.

Despite the global crisis, Zoho reported an impressive 37% growth in revenues for 2022, in contrast to the 22% global growth during the same period. “India will be Zoho’s No.1 market in five years,” Vembu said.

He stressed that India has shown resilience even in times of uncertainty. He predicted that India’s contribution to Zoho’s revenues will exceed 20% within five years, and potentially climb to 35% or even 40%, making it the company’s largest market.

On Zoho’s performance, Vembu said it has reported a remarkable 150% revenue growth in Cliq for the year 2023, marking a fourfold increase since 2020.

He claimed that Cliq could accommodate up to 1 lakh employees per organisation, with as many as 30,000 active participants on a channel.

“Meetings can host up to 1,000 active participants, while live events can draw an audience of up to 12,000 viewers,” he said. (UNI)