Zoho, a provider of cloud-based business software, will open an office in Bahrain to bolster its support to start-ups and businesses across the board.
“The Bahrain market has a lot of potential, and we hope this year we can open an office here,” Ali Shabdar, Regional Director, MEA, Zoho Corp, said.
“We have been working on a couple of good initiatives, making sure that we will continue to help Bahraini businesses. Next year there will be good news for Bahrain.”
The opening of an office in Bahrain is a step in the right direction and reinforces Bahrain’s position as a key market for Zoho, he added.
“Zoho has been supporting Bahrain both from its Dubai office and through partners – IT companies, accounting companies, or management consultant companies they offer services based on the Zoho solutions.”
The Zoho office in Bahrain will cover the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia, one of the largest economies in the region, by using Bahrain as a gateway to a $2trillion regional economy.
Zoho is also opening an office in Jeddah soon “as it is almost ready” and expanding its footprints in Africa by opening an office in Cape Town, South Africa, and another one in Cairo.
“Between the 2019 and now we have increased the number of employees. While everyone else was downsizing we were scaling up, which is a good news as Zoho believes more partners, more staff and more business will help in managing to support customers,” he said.
“We have launched more apps to help businesses during pandemic and services have been available remotely for free globally. In a nutshell, Zoho unveiled ten applications for productivity, collaboration, communication and those can be used by up to 10 users completely free with full versions.”
The company also allowed free licenses for building applications for NGOs, and especially organisations dealing with the COVID-19 relief operations.
Opening a data centre in Bahrain is still on the cards, he added.
“Bahrain is a very important destination for setting up a data centre, and we are hopeful to work on this project; however, due to the current situation no timeframe can be announced for this project,” he said.
“The infrastructure Bahrain is quite unique in the region with more transparency in rules and regulations, and the economy is growing steadily. We will remain committed and a partner to businesses in Bahrain.”
As Bahrain is seen as a prime location for a call centre, Zoho will be growing into that space and will offer training programmes and workshops to empower Bahrainis to develop further and reach higher levels, he said.
“Zoho celebrates 25 birthday as a startup, and we want to give these tools and culture to the startup community so that they can remain focused on their core product.”
