Malaysia — March 23, 2020 — Zoho Corporation, a global company that offers the most comprehensive suite of business software applications in the industry, is launching its Small Business Emergency Subscription Assistance Program (ESAP) to help Zoho customers worldwide weather this global crisis. ESAP is one way Zoho is committing itself to helping its small business customers. For up to 20,000 qualified paying customers with 25 employees or less, Zoho is waiving the cost of every single application they currently use, for up to 3 months.
"Businesses are hurting. They already face tremendous pressure on revenue and cash flows. Not knowing when things will get back to normal is even worse," said Sridhar Vembu, Zoho co-founder and CEO. "Every bit of help we, and other companies, can offer to keep these small businesses afloat will go a long way, not just financially but emotionally as well. We are in this together, and contributions from every business help our community get through this pandemic."
Zoho is a 24-year-old, bootstrapped, privately held company with more than 50 million users located in over 180 countries. Since the beginning, Zoho has owed its existence to its small business customers. While Zoho now has grown significantly upmarket, serving mid-market and enterprise customers in addition to small businesses, the company believes that for the broader economy to stay healthy, SMBs must first stay healthy and viable. ESAP is intended to lighten the financial burden put upon our small business customers during this chaotic and difficult period.
"Certain industries have been disproportionately impacted by the pandemic, and we strongly encourage our customers in these industries to please apply for this Small Business Emergency Subscription Assistance Program," continued Vembu. "While we want to provide relief for as many small business customers as possible, we will prioritize those who are most in need and hope that others who are adapting to market conditions will help us by allowing program availability to those struggling to stay afloat."
Earlier this month, Zoho launched Remotely, a virtual productivity platform of 11 collaboration applications, provided to businesses of all sizes around the world for free, so that companies could effectively make the transition to remote work. Since its release 2 weeks ago, more than 5,000 new companies are running on the platform, and that number is increasing every day. We have seen an average of 500% growth in the usage of our collaboration apps and 1,000% growth in daily new users of Zoho Meeting.
"Our business has been extremely affected by the COVID-19 outbreak. We were on the leading edge of the impact," said Anders Boulanger, Founder and CEO of The Infotainers, a Canada-based event entertainment company. "We work delivering custom presentations in our clients' trade show booths, and one by one trade shows have been canceled leaving us with little to no income for the next 4 months or more. Last week, we were forced to lay off one of our employees. At the moment, we are taking extreme cost-cutting measures and many of our month-to-month subscriptions are on the chopping block. We would definitely consider our business a 'Zoho Shop'. We will touch at least 2 or 3 Zoho applications on any single work day, so they are mission critical to our business' long-term success. It means a lot to us that Zoho is reaching out and supporting their loyal customers. Having 3 months of complimentary services means that we can survive that much longer and we can put off laying off another employee. Every little bit helps when it comes to finding savings and this gesture goes a long way!"
Between this global program and the no-cost availability of Zoho Remotely, a full virtual collaboration platform, Zoho is committed to helping as many businesses as possible. We are encouraging other companies in a position to help businesses survive to join us in supporting the small business ecosystem.
Please see a video announcement of the Small Business Emergency Subscription Assistance Program from our CEO Sridhar Vembu: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1dmqScydb64
For more information and to apply for the Small Business Emergency Assistance Subscription Program, please visit www.zoho.com/ESAP.
