Zoho's 20% increase in customers in the ANZ region, and its 11% increase in revenue from FY24 to FY25, can be attributed to a concerted marketing campaign, backed up by a good channel strategy, according to Zoho ANZ general manager Rakesh Prabhakar.
“We've been working very closely with our channel partners to engage whatever traffic or momentum we're building with our branding campaigns, and whatever digital campaigns we do, we are trying to funnel it through our channel partnerships, and that as a whole has given us this value,” he told techpartner.news.
Prabhakar added this was further bolstered by a focus on the key verticals of construction, retail, healthcare and energy.
With more than 40,000 customers, ANZ now represents one of Zoho’s fastest growing markets, contributing to a 14.5% compound annual growth rate (CAGR). In 2025, customers in ANZ now use an average of 23 apps from Zoho’s technology stack, up from 18 in 2024.
Customers asking for AI agents
He explained that AI is the "most prevalent market trend" Zoho is seeing in Australia, but its currently at the stage of customers wanting to know where the company is at with AI adoption internally in anticipation of that technology then flowing down into products customers can use.
"With each iteration [of products], we're adding more contextual AI capabilities, and we're building it into the products, so we do have a narrative to tell [around AI]," he said.
"Somebody might need an agent to clean up their mailboxes if they're spending too much money on data storage; somebody else might have a requirement wherein they're having quite a few sales meetings and they want an agent to get the minutes and prep for it.
"Every customer's environment and requirements is different, but there is definitely an uptick in the number of customers who want such purpose driven AI agents."
Tenfold growth in local employees
He also outlined a somewhat more novel strategy that he said is part of Zoho’s global approach: avoiding the biggest cities.
“Our office [in Australia] is in Adelaide and the reason for that is, as an organisation, we've always believed that jobs should go to where people are," he told techpartner.news.
"Usually Sydney and Melbourne are the go-to cities for any SaaS company to be in, and we usually take the contrarian bet; even in India and in the US we do the same thing."
He added that tier-two cities like Adelaide have all the infrastructure of a highly populous city, plus a pool of talent that can be hired, trained and retrained to grow a strong team.
Zoho has increased local employee numbers tenfold since it opened its Australian office three years ago, with the number of staff increasing from three to 30.
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