Partner-Led Expansion Fuels Zoho’s Global Growth

At ZohoDay 2026, I sat down with Anand Nergunam Suryanarayanan, Vice President of Revenue Acceleration, Zoho. The role Anand explained includes partnerships, referral marketing, and all the ISV relationships. Zoho has over 500 partners, as well as other ISV firms with a presence on the Zoho Marketplace. In recent years, these relationships have evolved with Zoho working closely with them on different market verticals.

Zoho operates across many software sectors, verticals and geographic regions. I asked Anand whether there is a focus for partners. He replied that there are three regions where partners are the focus. The first is its home region, India and Sri Lanka. In the last few years India has risen from 11^th largest partner ecosystem to the 3^rd, and it is still growing.

In regions such as MEA (Middle East and Africa) and Latin America, Zoho has a partner-first market approach. The change in strategy has meant that Zoho is no longer an inbound company; it is an outbound one that enables its partners. This has enabled Zoho to become a high-touch company without having to recruit large numbers in every geographic area.

Government Partnerships

In some regions, Zoho has also formed strong relationships with government organisations. Is that a strategic or a local approach?

Anand replied, “It’s locally, always locally, in the case of the Middle East, the moment we put up a data centre in Saudi Arabia and now in the Emirates, we got the attention of the government. They felt more comfortable. They’re encouraging financial services companies to work with us.

“But that is difficult for us to replicate in every geography, to put our own data centres. So, the path for us to government is always going to be: Can we put up a data centre and does the economics work out.

“Option two is that we are actively working on moving on top of the public cloud. That’s an option of hosting on the public cloud. We’re confident before the end of this year, we’ll be in good shape. In the markets like the US, for example, a FedRAMP certification is a must.

“For our own data centres to get the FedRAMP is probably taking 18 – 24 months, optimistically. A better way to do it is through a certified public cloud. Government (partnership) is always a very regional, well thought out strategy.”

With growth in the partner network in India, I asked Anand what type of partners are they: startup’s, partners of other vendors or consulting firms looking for the right technology.

Anand replied that there are all kinds. Some have worked with other ISVs. Either the ISV has proved themselves out of the market or the technology does not keep up with customer demand. Zoho is also attracting a lot of business advisors and consultancies as part of the business advice they offer. Firms are also asked what tech stack they should use.

On verticals

One of the customers presenting at Zoho Day was New Cross Healthcare, they now have a solution that works to automate business processes. However, the solution was deployed successfully only after they took the project in-house. Using a partner, the original deployment failed three times. I asked Anand how Zoho maintains the quality of its partners and ensures they have the right certifications in place?

Anand admitted that until two years ago, Zoho recognised revenue only to determine the partner’s level. Over the last two years, Zoho has started looking beyond revenue. It now considers CSAT scores based on a Zoho survey, employee churn among those partners, and ensures partners are looking after employees.

Zoho is now taking this a step further, especially in the mid-market. It aims to have a health check during the first 90 days of any project, with feedback from both partner and customer about the project.

Anand explained, “We want to talk and get feedback from both sides to see if this is going well, so we can catch them early before it becomes a failed project, and blows up in our face. It’s not good for any of us, because the partner doesn’t get paid fully, and the customer loses time, and for us, it’s a bad name.”

Supporting partner growth internationally

Zoho has all these partners developing applications and solutions across the world, how are you ensuring that their applications are both available and supported worldwide.

Anand explained, “We do it at two levels. Whenever a partner has something which is really done well, we have a regional event called Inspire. We invite the partners to present their success stories. The best project that they have done the last year. Every other partner, 100 of them in the room. It happens at a regional level.”

Anand added that some solutions created by partners are not productized but are excellent solutions. This is where the partner account managers, who have greater awareness of the solutions that partners develop, talk to each other and make connections between partners who might want to work with one another. With that knowledge, that may facilitate the transfer of the project to a partner with greater experience in the sector.

Currently, Zoho does this very much at a regional level, partly because many vertical solutions do not translate across regional boundaries in terms of culture and compliance.

The challenge with this approach is whether it scales. One solution might be to improve the partner page, to provide some detailed information about vertical industry expertise as well as links to solutions. Perhaps even sharing customer ratings so prospects can choose a partner best suited to their industry. Anand saw this as a great way to do it, recognising how to document that and make it a reliable source might not be as easy.

Becoming the Netflix of business applications

Anand had previously stated during the event that he wanted the Zoho Marketplace to be the Netflix of business applications. How does he believe that he can scale to fulfil this vision?

Anand replied, “Actually, the way to do it, in my view, is test it out with 30 partners, come up with a model, and then create a self-help group, a community of ISVs within a region, because language and regulation come easier, and it’s easier to go and meet in person.”

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