South Africa could become the fastest-growing major market in the world for a technology company that most people have never heard of.
Zoho is an Indian software maker whose applications can run almost every part of a business, from accounting and email to sales, customer service and retail. It serves more than 150-million users in 150 countries, employs more than 19,000 people and generates more than a billion dollars in annual revenue. Yet, Zoho has remained privately owned, profitable and self-funded during its 30-year history.
Its South African operation has grown ninefold over the past eight years. Revenue rose by 34% during 2025 and, by July this year, was running about 60% ahead of the equivalent period last year.
South Africa is ranked 12th among Zoho’s markets worldwide and is expected to reach 10th place this year. The company believes this could become the fastest-growing of its 15 largest markets, which collectively generate around 80% of global revenue.
Such growth gives the local office greater influence over where Zoho invests and which products receive South African editions, says Andrew Bourne, Zoho’s regional head for Southern Africa.
“The company starts saying, This country is performing well – we should probably build the next localised version of a product for that country,” he told Gadget during the company’s annual South African user conference, Zoholics, in Midrand this week.
“It becomes easier for me to motivate for South African versions of products. If there is no South African version, the company is potentially missing an opportunity.”
The latest result is Zoho POS, a point-of-sale system adapted for South African retailers. It manages payments, stock, customer loyalty programmes and multiple stores, while connecting with Zoho’s accounting and online retail software.
It has been configured for local VAT requirements and can continue processing transactions during a connectivity outage. The launch fills one of the largest gaps in Zoho’s local suite. Payroll remains another, although the company has partly addressed it through an integration with South African provider SimplePay. It is also working on a connection to SARS that would allow VAT returns to be submitted through eFiling.
Both Zoho’s growth and such integrations could translate into South African employment beyond its current 50-strong staff complement.
Its success has created a problem many companies wish for: customers are coming on board faster than the people who can configure and support the software.
“We have built our own professional-services team,” said Bourne. “Highly technical South Africans act as the customer-facing professional-services team while leveraging development resources in India.
“We run that operation roughly at break-even. We do not want to profit heavily from it. We want customers to be happy and confident in what we can deliver. Now we need more of those resources.”
Zoho’s appeal lies partly in giving small companies access to the kind of integrated business systems once associated with large corporate technology budgets. Its products can cost around a quarter of the price of some rivals, according to Bourne. Their flexibility means they have to be adapted to the processes of each business.
“Historically, the advantage of Zoho has been that you can mould it to almost any business. The challenge is that customers sometimes take on Zoho believing they can configure everything themselves. They later realise they need a partner but do not have the internal resources.”
That has prompted Zoho to plan local courses and certifications, seek a place in university curricula and discuss a partnership with CapaCiTi, the Cape Town-based digital-skills organisation. The aim is to train young people who could work for Zoho, its partners or its customers.
It also addresses one of the oddities of South Africa’s corporate training system. Large enterprises fund learnerships on the expensive software they use internally. Graduates who miss out on permanent positions may discover that smaller companies use entirely different systems.
“In South Africa, roughly seven out of ten jobs come from SMEs, but SMEs generally do not use that expensive software. Through Zoho, we could match graduates with customers and reseller partners. We could also hire from that group.”
Its next phase could connect locally hosted technology, locally adapted products and a new pool of South Africans trained to deploy them. That would turn one company’s revenue growth into a wider business opportunity.
“You can complete all the theoretical Zoho learning available,” says Bourne, “but the real learning happens when you build.”
* Arthur Goldstuck is CEO of World Wide Worx, editor-in-chief of Gadget.co.za, and author of “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to AI – The African Edge”.