Everything You Need to Know About Zoho Mafia

Everything You Need to Know About Zoho Mafia
Zoho Mafia

Zoho mafia refers to the group of companies that were founded by former Zoho employees. Zoho was founded in the year 1996 by Sridhar Vembu and Tony Thomas in Pleasanton, California; it was initially known as Advent Inc. and later renamed Zoho Corporation in the year 2009.

Vembu began his entrepreneurial venture from a small apartment room in Chennai, partnering with Tony Thomas, who specialized in Network Management. Zoho's headquarters in Perungudi, Chennai, began its journey by building software products in the 1990s. The company focuses on building web-based applications and software products.

Here are some of the companies founded by Ex-Zoho employees or Zoho Mafia:

Company Name Founder
Freshworks Girish Mathrubootham
Chargebee Krish Subramanian
Hippo Video Karthi Mariappan S
Facilio Prabhu Ramachandran, Rajavel Subramanian,
Krishnamoorthi Rangasamy, and Yogendra Babu
Survey Sparrow Shihab Muhammed
ULektz Dr. Sadiq Sait M.S
B2Brain Sridhar Ranganathan and Karthik Mahadevan
Bizapp Hasnol Mizam
Edmingle Gaurav Doshi
Securden Bala Venkatramani
Voonik Sujayath Ali
Delegate.ai Sachin Dev Duggal
Hexnode Apu Pavithran
StartPix Mathys van Abbe
Bevywise Ranjith Kumar Diraviyam
Tart Labs Gowtham Raj
Testsigma Rukmangada Kandyala
BrandMaxima Vignesh Annamalai
Smackcoders Fenzik Joseph
LogFuze Venkadesan Velu
Daacoworks Gomanthisankar S.
Docupilot Aravind S
Quartrdesign Vigneshwaran Pitchai
Yaali Appadurai A N, Karthi Mariappan S
Spikra Radha Rengachari

What does Zoho do?
What is Zoho Mafia?
Top Companies Founded by Zoho Mafia

What does Zoho do?

Sridhar Venmbhu | Founder of Zoho
Sridhar Venmbhu | Founder of Zoho

Zoho is an Indian multinational company that specializes in software development, cloud computing, and web-based business tools. Their first and most successful product is Zoho CRM, launched in 2005. Since then, Zoho CRM has reached its 1 million user milestone in the year 2008. The company has grown to become a leader in the SaaS industry and has over 100 million users globally. On Republic Day, celebrated on January 26th,2021, Sridhar Venmbhu was granted the Padma Shri Award for his contributions to Zoho and Atmanirbhar Bharat campaign. According to Forbes, Sridhar Vembu's net worth of $3.75 billion makes him the 55th richest person in India.


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What is Zoho Mafia?

The term 'Zoho mafia' has to do with the former employees of Zoho who began their entrepreneurial journey after working at Zoho. Zoho mafia is an outfit that creates jobs directly and indirectly in Chennai. It is a vital part of the Indian software industry as it not only creates jobs but also inspires future entrepreneurs.

With revenue of more than $153.55 Mn in Q3-2023, this outfit is quickly turning Chennai into a breeding ground for deep-tech startups, said Girish Mathrubootham, a former Zoho employee who quit Zoho to start his venture called Freshworks in 2010. Since its inception, Freshworks has grown to become a global leader in software products built for small and medium-scale businesses for cloud-based business software, earning a majority of the revenue in North American and European markets. It generated $545 million in revenue in 2023.

Freshworks Annual Revenue
Freshworks Annual Revenue

Freshworks is the first Indian SaaS company listed on the Nasdaq Stock Exchange. The growth of Freshworks has been exponential. The market capitalization of the company in 2023 is $5.38 Billion. The company launched Freshdesk in 2010 to engage customers with customer support and sales. It then rebranded to Freshdesk to launch other SaaS tools like Freshmarketer, Freshsales, etc., which help entrepreneurs in Customer Relationship Management.


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Top Companies Founded by Zoho Mafia

Chargebee - Automated Billing Software

Founders Krish Subramanian, Rajaraman Santhanam, Thiyagaranjan T, Saravanan Kp
Founded in 2011
Headquarters Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India
Krish Subramanian | Chargebee Co-Founder & CEO
Krish Subramanian | Chargebee Co-Founder & CEO

Chargebee is a SaaS subscription billing and revenue management software that powers end-to-end recurring billing services for subscription businesses. It helps in automating subscriptions, billing, invoicing, and payments, as well as provides other key metrics and insights into the subscription business.

Hippo Video - Easy-To-Use Video Solution for All Your Business Needs

Co-Founder & CEO Karthi Mariappan S, Nilamchand Jain
Founded in 2017
Headquarters Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India
Karthi Mariappan S | Hippo Video Co-Founder & CEO
Karthi Mariappan S | Hippo Video Co-Founder & CEO

Hippo Video is an online video recording tool that provides an easy-to-use video solution for all your business needs. With Hippo Video, you can capture, record, edit, share, and store screen captures. It lets us record video from the desktop screen or the webcam with a click of a button.

Hippo Video lets you automate your entire sales process to send personalized videos at scale. It delivers customized email campaigns to help you get more leads, drive sales, improve customer retention, and expand your brand reach.

Facilio - Changing the Way Buildings Are Managed

Founders Prabhu Ramachandran, Rajavel Subramanian,
Krishnamoorthi Rangasamy, and Yogendra Babu
Founded in 2017
Headquarters Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India
Facilio Founders
Facilio Founders

Facilio is an AI and ML-powered data-driven property operations software that helps real estate owners and operators get hard-to-access building data, optimize building performance, and build operations across real estate portfolios towards a data-centric and driven model of operation.

Survey Sparrow - Turn Surveys Into Conversations

Founder & CEO Shihab Muhammed
Founded in 2017
Headquarters Palo Alto, CA 94306, United States
 Shihab Muhammed | Survey Sparrow Founder & CEO
Shihab Muhammed | Survey Sparrow Founder & CEO

Survey Sparrow is an omnichannel experience management platform that helps drive employee engagement and customer experience through the use of surveys. A conversational interface helps you deliver surveys in a chat-like experience and increase completion rates by up to 40% with the use of a mobile-friendly and highly engaging experience.

This omnidirectional approach helps you reach your audience faster. This platform delivers many solutions to measure the loyalty of your customers and employees alike through NPS surveys, 360 surveys, chat-like surveys, and classic surveys.

Ulektz - Delivering a Digital Learning Experience

Founder & CEO Dr. Sadiq Sait M.S
Founded in 2016
Headquarters Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India
Dr. Sadiq Sait M.S | ULektz Founder & CEO
Dr. Sadiq Sait M.S | ULektz Founder & CEO 

ULektz is an EdTech SaaS Startup founded in the year 2016; it provides a wide range of resources for education, employability, and employment opportunities to higher education students. ULektz offers an ecosystem to connect students, educators, and all other stakeholders of higher education and provide them with curated quality resources and services for enhancing education, skills, and careers.

They also help drive a digital learning experience by providing mobile apps (Cloud-based educational ERP software) to help colleges and universities leverage innovative technologies.

B2Brain - Offers Lead Intelligence Software

Co-founders Sridhar Ranganathan and Karthik Mahadevan
Founded in 2020
Headquarters Wilmington, United States
B2Brain Co-founder and CEO | Sridhar Ranganathan
B2Brain Co-founder and CEO | Sridhar Ranganathan

Founded in 2020, B2Brain is the sales teamโ€™s companion for automated account intelligence. You can automate account research to focus on opening accounts, building pipelines, and creating opportunities. You can get Intel, Talking Points, and Leads directly in your CRM/SEP. Using B2Brain, you can accelerate outbound sales with contextual information on your leads and accounts.

It is trusted by enterprises such as Auditoria, Capillary, Evolv, Salesloft, Flutura, and others globally. It integrates with leading CRMs, SEPs, and Collaboration tools such as Salesforce, Salesloft, Slack, MS Teams, Freshworks, Zoho, and more.

Edmingle - Build Your Online Teaching Empire

Founders Gaurav Doshi, Harshit Sharaff
Founded in 2016
Headquarters Bengaluru, Karnataka
Gaurav Doshi | Edmingle Founder & CEO
Gaurav Doshi | Edmingle Founder & CEO

Edmingle is a SaaS-based LMS platform for educators, colleges, and coaching institutes. It allows educators to design personalized courses, create exams, quizzes, exercises, and assignments, have conversations, and track student performance across subjects and courses. Teachers and administrators can send real-time notifications to students and parents for real-time monitoring and feedback. It also has marketing capabilities built in to boost student registrations and marketing for coaching institutes. It has an app for both Android and iOS devices.

Tart Labs - Crafting Innovative Software Solutions

Founder Gowtham Raj
Founded in 2014
Headquarters Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu
Gowtham Raj | Tart Labs Founder
Gowtham Raj | Tart Labs Founder

Tart Labs is a leading software development company headquartered in Coimbatore, India. The company was founded in 2014 with a vision to revolutionize the software industry. Since then, Tart Labs has grown exponentially and has become a trusted partner for businesses of all sizes across the globe.

Tart Labs offers various services, including mobile and web application design and development, enterprise applications, cloud consulting, and cybersecurity solutions. The company's team of experienced and skilled professionals is passionate about creating innovative and user-friendly software solutions that meet the specific needs of their clients.

Voonik - Fashion for Every Woman

Founder Sujayath Ali and Navaneetha Krishnan
Founded in 2013
Headquarters Bengaluru, Karnataka
Sujayath Ali and Navaneetha Krishnan | Voonik Founders
Sujayath Ali and Navaneetha Krishnan | Voonik Founders

Voonik is an online marketplace for women's fashion. It offers a wide range of products from over 10,000 brands, including apparel, footwear, accessories, and beauty products.

Voonik's mission is to make fashion accessible and affordable for every woman. The company uses technology to provide its customers with a personalized shopping experience. Customers can create profiles and specify their style, size, budget, and preferences. Voonik then uses this information to recommend products that are likely to interest the customer. The company has been growing rapidly in recent years. 2017, the company raised $20 million in funding from RB Investments. Voonik is now one of India's leading online marketplaces for women's fashion.

Securden - Secure Your Privileged Access, Protect Your Most Critical Assets

Founders Balasubramanian Venkataramani, Kumaran Balan
Founded in 2018
Headquarters Newark, United States
Balasubramanian Venkataramani, Kumaran Balan | Securden Founders
Balasubramanian Venkataramani, Kumaran Balan | Securden Founders

Securden is a leading provider of privileged access management (PAM) solutions. PAM is a critical security discipline that helps organizations protect their most sensitive data and systems from unauthorized access. Securden's solutions provide comprehensive features to help organizations manage and control their privileged accounts and passwords, monitor and control privileged access to systems and applications, and assess and mitigate the risks associated with privileged accounts.

Startpix - Fueling Digital Transformation With Content and Personalized Commerce

Founders Mohammed Yasar Ibrahim
Founded in 2018
Headquarters Chennai, Tamil Nadu
Mohammed Yasar Ibrahim | StartPix Technologies Founder
Mohammed Yasar Ibrahim | StartPix Technologies Founder

StartPix Technologies is a Chennai-based digital transformation company that delivers content and personalized commerce solutions, fueling the transformation in digital experiences.

StartPix Technologies offers a wide range of services, including digital commerce, content management, customer relationship management (CRM), and enterprise resource planning (ERP). The company helps businesses to build and manage their online stores, create and manage their content across all digital channels, implement and manage CRM systems to improve customer engagement and loyalty and implement and manage ERP systems to streamline their operations and improve efficiency.

Docupilot - Automate Your Documents to Grow Your Business

Founders Aravind S, Rohit Reddy Abbadi
Founded in 2018
Headquarters Newark, Delaware, United States
Aravind S, Rohit Reddy Abbadi | Docupilot Founders
Aravind S, Rohit Reddy Abbadi | Docupilot Founders

DocuPilot is a document automation and generation software that helps businesses create and manage documents more efficiently. It allows users to create dynamic documents from intelligent templates and data and send the created documents as email or to their favorite apps like DocuSign, Dropbox, Zapier, etc. DocuPilot can generate PDF or Word documents from Google Forms response, Google Sheets, Jotform, NinjaForms, Salesforce Leads, and other sources.

DocuPilot is a cloud-based solution, so it is accessible from anywhere with an internet connection. It is also easy to use, with a drag-and-drop interface and pre-built templates for common documents. DocuPilot is affordable and offers a free trial, so businesses of all sizes can try it before they buy it.

Conclusion

In conclusion, there are various companies founded by former Zoho employees. With experience working in Zoho combined with their engineering knowledge, they have developed many successful products hailing both Indian and Overseas markets in the niche technology segment of cloud-based applications across various industry verticals. They also help each other to thrive in the SaaS marketplace by providing their services to one another.

FAQs

What does Zoho do?

Zoho is a web-based online office suite containing word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, databases, note-taking, wikis, web conferencing, customer relationship management (CRM), project management, invoicing, and other applications. Specific needs of the businesses can be met through Zoho.

Who is the founder of Zoho?

Sridhar Vembu is the founder and CEO of Zoho.

When was Zoho founded?

Zoho was founded in 1996 by Sridhar Vembu and Tony Thomas.

What are the companies founded by Zoho Mafia?

  • Freshworks
  • Chargebee
  • Hippo Video
  • Facilio
  • Survey Sparrow
  • ULektz
  • B2Brain
  • Bizapp
  • Edmingle
  • Securden
  • Voonik
  • Delegate.ai
  • Hexnode
  • StartPix
  • Bevywise
  • Tart Labs
  • Testsigma
  • BrandMaxima
  • Smackcoders
  • LogFuze
  • Daacoworks
  • Docupilot
  • Quartrdesign

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