Zoho’s investments in rural areas focus on developing local talent, building advanced technical capabilities, promoting organic farming, and fostering community-wide development.
Zoho Corporation, a global technology company headquartered in Chennai, today shared an update on its ongoing rural recovery efforts and reiterated its commitment to investing in R&D and talent. In the last six months, the company has opened two ‘hub’ offices in his Tiruppur and Trichy. It is planned to open in Tirunelveli and Madurai districts of Tamil Nadu and his one district of Uttar Pradesh. Zoho is also expanding the current facilities of Kalaivani Kalvi Maiyam, a learning center opened during the pandemic to educate young children in Tenkasi and surrounding villages.
“We are in a time of heightened economic uncertainty. Moreover, powerful AI technologies can transform the way we work, presenting both great challenges and opportunities. Zoho Corp’s Co-Founder and CEO Sridhar Vembu said:
In 2020, Zoho decided to follow the hub-and-spoke model of its offices, embracing it as part of its “transnational localism” strategy to accommodate a distributed workforce and stay locally rooted while maintaining global connectivity. Hub offices are his offices that can accommodate more than 1000 employees, and spoke offices are smaller offices that can accommodate up to 100 employees. Each hub office will eventually have several associated spoke offices for infrastructure support and team collaboration.
The company currently has five hub offices, including Chennai, Tenkasi and Renigunta, and currently around 30 spoke offices in India. Nearly 2,000 employees work in Zoho hub and spoke offices in villages and Tier 2/3 towns, of which about 1,000 are locally employed. As part of its local empowerment efforts, the Spoke Office regularly conducts free career awareness sessions at surrounding universities, upskilling workshops and incubation programs to identify and hire talented local youth. is being implemented.
“The distributed workforce model reflects the idea of distributing growth and income across Tier 2/3 communities rather than concentrating them in urban areas. Outside of these hub-and-spoke offices, including some teams involved in technology research and development, the long-term vision of these efforts is to create self-sufficient and economically prosperous rural communities.” said Vembu.
Kalaivani Kalvi Maiyam (KKM) currently has 130 elementary, middle and high school teachers from surrounding villages, 19 full-time and 5 part-time teachers. A 75,000-square-foot facility is under construction at his KKM Center in Tenkasi. It includes a building that accommodates 750 students, spacious classrooms dedicated to vocational studies, and live workshop sessions on core engineering concepts such as motorcycle/car assembly and electrical projects. Another branch of KKM will open in his Cumbam in Theni where work has already begun.
“The driving philosophy behind the local initiative is to preserve and revitalize small villages and towns before they decline due to severe urban migration and lack of resources. Future generations of rural areas. must have the skills, capabilities and tools needed to foster grassroots innovation, solve local problems, produce high-value goods locally, and advance community progress.”
Kalaivani Kalvi Maiyam is a free learning center for students aged 2 to 16. KKM’s main focus is literacy and numeracy to build a strong foundation of communication and critical thinking. Vocational training such as terracotta jewelry making, motorcycle mechanics, and cultural training such as martial arts (Silambam) and classical dance (Bharathnatyam) have also been added to the curriculum. His KKM, which he opened in his Govindaperi village, Tenkasi in 2020, follows the Montessori system for primary schools and is affiliated with the National Institute of Open Schooling. KKM’s aim is to equip students with practical life skills and appropriate competencies. This guides students as they graduate from university, get a direct job, or start a business.
Zoho Corporation is the world’s most prolific company with over 55 apps in almost every major business category, including sales, marketing, customer support, accounting and back office operations, and an array of productivity and collaboration tools. One of the technology companies. Headquartered in Chennai, India, Zoho is a privately held, profitable company with over 12,000 employees. For more information, please visit www.zoho.com.
