Image of Zoho Corporation building used for representative purposes.
CHENNAI: ManageEngine, the enterprise information technology management division of Zoho Corp, is facing headwinds from the global macro-economic situation, as its top revenue-generating markets like North America and the UK slow down. After witnessing recovery from the pandemic in the financial year (FY) 2020-21 with 25 per cent growth, it gained 18 per cent growth in FY22. But since last July, ManageEngine is facing the impact of slowdown and inflation.
“We’re starting to see sales cycles getting delayed in North America, Australia and the UK markets,” Rajesh Ganesan, President of ManageEngine told this newspaper. Longer waiting times, non-renewal of products, and a higher level of prudence by the customers are posing challenges and it has impacted the first quarter numbers, he said. However, its business in India and the Middle East, which is among the top five markets, are largely unaffected.
ManageEngine contributes nearly 50 per cent of the billion-dollar revenue of Zoho Corp, making it worth about USD 500 million, along with Zoho.com. Despite softness in demand and uncertainty, it hopes to grow as a billion-dollar company in two-three years, Ganesan said. “We plan to provide comprehensive products/ services to manage complete technical infrastructure management of customers, encompassing tech service, end-point, operation, security information and compliance management and move up the value chain. Technology infrastructure management is a 50 billion USD market globally.
The company also bets on its research and development (R&D) to double its revenue. It spends about 60 per cent of its sales. We’re marketing via engineering,” said Shailesh Davey, co-founder of Zoho Corp and vice President of Engineering at ManageEngine. Integrating more artificial intelligence (AI) solutions to their product suite and opening more data centres around the world is the company’s priority, he added.
“We have been focusing on generative artificial intelligence (AI) for the last five years. Instead of looking at AI as a separate entity, we weave it into our products. We believe it can bring more efficiency and insights and should be available inside the product without any extra costs.” We’re coming up with our generative AI stack as well as integrate with APIs (application programming interface) available on market.”
The company is building data centres through a co-location model for its use. “Cloud solutions are growing fast due to adoption, but a lot of customers prefer to have the data centres within the border, due to privacy and data sovereignty regulations.”
