How Indian SaaS Beats Global Incumbents | Tony Thomas, Zoho Corporation | TFiR

Swapnil Bhartiya: Hi, this is Swapnil Bhartiya and we are here in Orlando, FL at Userconf 2026 from Zoho ManageEngine. And today we have with us Tony Thomas, co founder of Zoho as well as ManagEngine. First of all, Tony, it’s great to have you back on the. Not back on the show. This is the first time you’re on talking. So first of all it’s great to have you on the show.

Tony Thomas: Thank you. Pleasure to be here.

Swapnil Bhartiya: It’s my pleasure. And when we look at this whole ecosystem, the whole market, the way Zoho is making waves is great from many reasons. Of course incumbents are facing some challenges. At the same time. We are seeing global presence from area where, you know, India contributes a lot to the software market. But now we are seeing companies who are actually making splash there. So I want to know from you when, why and how you created, what triggered you to co found Zoho?

Tony Thomas: Thank you for the question. So it’s been a long time now. It’s going back to ancient history. So when we first started we were a small team that was trying to create a product. So we were focused on building products that what was then the telecom industry. And so it definitely took us a lot of energy to get our initial products out. But we saw India as a great place to build products. That’s what the genesis of Zoho as using engineers in India to build products for the US market. The US market is where we started and you know, it’s been become a worldwide company. Now we’re serving markets all over the world.

Swapnil Bhartiya: The when you mentioned US market, are you targeting only the US market? Are you looking at the global because you have EMEA or of course Europe is a big market as well. India itself is a huge market. Of course China can be a market as well. So when you look at from when you started and when you see now also this, I mean the world we are living in, it has changed when you started. So how do you look at scattering too? And also if you can talk about which markets or is Zoho more the presence is stronger versus other markets.

Tony Thomas: So when we first started, 100% of the market was the U.S. as you can imagine, now it’s about 30% of our business. So worldwide the rest of the world is adopting technology and growing quite fast as you might imagine. Many countries are digitizing and you know, the business and the growth in the economy itself is significant as well as them getting more digital, more online. So the potential for Zoho across the world has been tremendous, and we’re seeing great growth in many countries. The US May be the one that is most challenging now because of AI and all the uncertainty, a lot of businesses are now wondering what their strategy should be. You know, with everything changing so fast, what should we be doing? So the challenge in the US is not that people don’t need this technology right now. People are just wondering what they should be doing. And of course, the AI budgets and cost of everything is eating into their budgets. So it is a challenging time for most businesses today, which explains some of the growth challenges for software companies and

Swapnil Bhartiya: since you opened the Pandora box of AI. So I would. And also when I was looking at this year’s conference, actually I was at Splunk conference just two weeks ago. I mean, every discussion is about AI. 99.9% of my interviews, no matter who I talk to, is about AI. How is AI reshaping Manage Engine or Zoho? Because if you look at the market, since you started, market has evolved new technologies, and it’s less about technology. It’s about where users are. You have to be where users are. Right? Otherwise you’ll be left behind, as we have seen with a lot of technologies. So talk about how is AI reshaping your whole architect, the foundation of Zoho as well as Manage Engine?

Tony Thomas: It’s a good question. I think. When AI first came out, certainly the personal use of AI was huge, and it’s still growing. When it comes to using AI in the enterprise, the first glimpses of AI came as feature products. So AI is improving some part of the product and it gets built into the product. But the real value of AI getting unlocked in business is based on improving outcomes, solving bigger problems more efficiently and faster, and providing a better business service. So in that context, doing more with AI comes down to impacting how business is done, how problems are solved within enterprises, and that’s a real value of AI. So for Zoho and Manage Engine, the key changes that are happening now, are we engaging much more with the market, looking at what use cases and outcomes customers want to solve, and then looking to implement that for customers and then taking that to service providers and others to extend the reach of what we can do.

Swapnil Bhartiya: AI has done two things from my perspective, and I’m a heavy user of AI. I build my own servers. I mean, ton of things. I’m not a developer. I’m a writer, journalist, a filmmaker. But I’m wipe coding. No offenses to those who don’t like wipe coding. But I have done and it’s secure. What it has changed is first of all, initially it looked magical, right? It can do things. Because AI has been around for so long, LLMs have changed things. So it’s more like you can through whatever it is, it will do it. Second is what we started seeing in the enterprise space, really. People used to boast about how many tokens they have consumed. Nvidia would talk about if you’re not consuming that many tokens which are equal to your salary, you’re not using. I don’t think that boasting on is more like saying, hey, my car consumes, you know, that many gallons of gas to go one mile. Yes, you can get, you know, all those. But that is also changing because token cost is becoming a big. Tokenomics is becoming a big topic. So I think it is flipping. It should be less about how much tokens you’re burning. It should be more about how much value you are getting by spending less tokens. So how do you look at where things are heading? And because this is not sustainable, I’m not even talking about data center, I’m not. I’ve got a lot of FUD around data center as well. A farm consumes more water than a data center, depends on how you look at it. But GPU availability, so this is not sustainable the way we are heading. So we have to change something. Now we cannot change a lot of things, the hardware, but we can change how we consume. So how, from your perspective, what organizations are doing or should do or how Manage Engine is helping them because cost should not mean drop the quality. That’s what happens. Right. So what is your take on that?

Tony Thomas: No, it’s actually a great question because affordability has always been at the center of our strategy. Zoho looks at sustainability, being able to provide value to customers without breaking the bank. That has always been the central ethos for Zoho. And so looking ahead at what AI needs to do, certainly wipe coding is helping with certain things. But if you look at all of our Manage Engine and Zoho products, security is essential. We can’t wipe code these products. You have to from compliance to being able to ensure that, you know, the infrastructure is secure, that trumps everything else in terms of priority. So building on a solid foundation, making sure it is secure and allowing just the parts that can be, you know, made, you know, white coated and made much faster to develop those. That’s how we look at AI. And in terms of cost, using the right size model for the right job is part of what we are Pushing very hard on. We are building our own internal models to optimize various parts of our workload. And you don’t need to use the frontier models for everything. And so making that a central piece of our solution is part of it.

Swapnil Bhartiya: You also hit Adanil. Everybody is obsessed with the bigger model. I feel the model, I mean I am heavy user myself. That model should fit on your general purpose laptop. You know there’s a. And second thing is that if you walk to Aristotle and ask about, you know, a small how to take turn how to reach to the exit, he will tell you about. He will not. So that is with the models also they, they hallucinate and they will take a lot of side quest and they will not answer your question and you’ll burn all the tokens. Another problem with the AI is if AI makes mistake, you have to pay to fix the mistake because you have to waste more st, more token so to correct it. So, so it is also important sometimes small models are very focused, you know, and then also on top of that you can build guard rails, harnesses proper. So what is manage engine approach? Where I mean you, you folks I think use Z, right? Zia. So, so, so, so what is your approach to, to bring the cost down, to have guard race, harness focus and also the quality should not be compromised.

Tony Thomas: So we’ve been putting a lot of effort into smaller size models. We built our own series of models and we are moving up in terms of both size and capability of those models and optimizing those models for specific workloads. So we look at taking our technology, deploying it for our own use and then slowly opening it up to customers to come in and use it as an alternative to the more expensive model. We’re also taking the open weight models and making them available to customers. And so we are definitely seeing that as an important piece. You know, the right sizing the model for the job is a very important piece going forward.

Swapnil Bhartiya: I mean, when we look at India, I originally come from India and we don’t see Yahoo from India or I’m not talking the Yahoo version of India, but we don’t. But the thing is Google, Microsoft, a lot of big companies, they are being led by Indians. Do you see Zoho is kind of paving a path or showing the world what they can expect from India. What role do you see of Zoho in changing that perspective? And now here we’re not talking about just what you call it, the optics. It’s more about solving real problems that customers face in A most efficient manner. At the same time, cost efficiency. Also you don’t have the baggage of all the other companies, you know, so you can be nimble, you can move fast. So what role do you see Zoho is playing in changing that perspective from both optics and practical point of view?

Tony Thomas: So I think just being a early company in this and setting the tone, Zoho is able to encourage a lot more people to come in and do similar things. Build product in India and sell it globally. And we are also engaging with the ecosystem of new companies in India working on new technologies. We do think in the future most products are not going to be just software. There’s going to be a convergence of many technologies in products. Just like with cars and self driving. Automation is going to reach into every industry and software is a key piece, AI is a key piece of all of that. So we see ourselves engaging with the ecosystem of companies in India and really helping them promote solutions across the world.

Swapnil Bhartiya: One last parting question would be that I grew up in India and when I talked to Linda Sturwell and I was like, hey, you know, when you look at open source, I personally open source background in European, Western, you know, economies, kids, you know, or students, you know, they don’t have to worry about career in India, you have to worry about career parents, then you have to get married, then get settled and then you start vacating. When you are at the last stage of your life, can you talk from the culture perspective, what mindset is changing or needs to change? So India also kind of start taking that risk, that entrepreneurial, you know, kind of gets into there and how they should start looking at, not worry about building a career, build something first.

Tony Thomas: No, I think that’s definitely emerging in India already. You know, the realization that entrepreneurship is a path to success, that awareness has definitely grown in India. It has to grow some more. But if you look at the cities in India, you’re seeing the entrepreneurship energy coming out and I think the government is doing number of things to support it. They are trying to, you know, from make in India to other, you know, initiatives, it’s helping but I think the biggest piece of it is really the ecosystem as I said, you know, from mentors to other companies doing this, to funding, the whole thing has to come together to make it a big success and I’m quite optimistic that’s going to happen.

Swapnil Bhartiya: Awesome. Thank you so much. It was great chatting with you and thanks for taking time out and I look forward to chatting with you.

Tony Thomas: Thank you, thank you very much.