Zoho's ManageEngine may become $1 bn firm ahead of target, says senior exec

Zoho Corp’s IT management solution provider division ManageEngine’s India market grew by 45% in FY22-23 to emerge as its second largest market of operation. In comparison, parent Zoho's total revenue grew 30.8% in FY23 from the previous fiscal. Not just India, the company’s growth in  emerging market that consists of South East Asia, Middle East, Latin America has been an 40-45%. This is a departure from the usual trend, said Rajesh Ganesan, President of ManageEngine, in a sense that the developed market (that comprises the US, UK, Australia, and Canada, among others) saw a single digit growth for the same period, owing largely to global economic conditions. 

ManageEngine, which has been traditionally an on-premise service provider since inception in 2002, has also seen 70% growth in it cloud business. Ganesan, while speaking at a ManageEngine-hosted event at Chennai, said that the company is now looking at delivering all its over 40 services – including process automation, service delivery, cybersecurity, and privacy – on a single platform. ManageEngine, has nearly 4,500 employees and operates in over 20 countries, serving more than 300,000 customers.

“The last 20 years were more about process automation, service delivery, monitoring tech infra – we were primarily serving small businesses. Going forward would be bringing cutting edge technology like artificial intelligence and machine learning to deliver for true hybrid workforce,” said Ganesan. Notably, in January 2023, at the ManageEngine UserConf Mumbai 2023, Zoho chief Sridhar Vembu said that ManageEngine is expected to reach $1 billion revenue in the next 2-3 years. Ganesan said that the company is already on track and can potentially breach the mark earlier than anticipated. 

Elaborating more on the AI efforts of the company, Shailesh Davey, the co-founder and vice president of engineering said that the company has up to 200 people working in this domain. “The conversation around AI has moved from marketing to sales. AI is highly commodotised and has become expectation of the customers,” he said. Given the current customer requirements, ManageEngine is largely utilising small and medium sized language models. These are open source models like Meta’s Llama, Amazon T5, and Technology Innovation Institute’s Falcon – which are trained grounds up. The company also offers integration with models OpenAI, Mistral, and Anthropic for large language models. 

“We are also building GPU infrastructure. We have partnered with industry leaders such as Nvidia, Intel and AMD. We and vendor agnostic and choose basis what provides maximum value for the customer. The overall investment towards this is about $10 million,” added Davey.

Note: Author was in Chennai on ManageEngine’s invitation