The business outlook for software is uncertain and AI has raised costs dramatically with a) massive 4-fold increase in server prices which we need for data centers b) AI usage increasing rapidly, leading to much higher expenses, which we are trying to control. On top of that is the challenging geopolitical backdrop. We have cut down on our marketing budget. We have also told our employees that we cannot have our usual pay increase this year. I have apolgized for not being able to avoid this. We will work hard to avoid mass layoffs but the outlook for software jobs in general is grim. We have not been growing our employee count for 18 months now. Most of our employees understand the situation. I am thankful to them. We are in the middle of reinventing ourselves. The next 3-5 years will decide how our reinvention has worked. Please pray for us 🙏

The DMK ecosystem is attacking me that the school issue I reported was a lie I concocted to help the TVK government. Let me state the facts. We run two rural schools, both free NIOS schools under the Kalaivani Kalvi Maiyam umbrella, one in rural Tenkasi and the other in rural Theni. The Theni school was originally started and run by a retired IPS officer, a honest and upright man. He built very nice facilities but had to shut down his CBSE school because the state government demanded too much money to issue the NOC. He told me that as a honest retired officer he did not have the money to pay and they would not issue the NOC otherwise. He urged us to take over his trust so we could run our free NIOS school in the premises. That is how we started our NIOS school in Theni. Unlike in Tenkasi, where I live, the Theni school faced occasional harassment from the DMK government because we did not have a state government registration, so we tried getting state government approval again (this time for the state board) and that of course would also cost money. So it was in a limbo. Meanwhile in Tenkasi we wanted to build new school facilities (we were operating in make-shift facilities, the ones that came in frequent photos) and we applied for DTCP approval to construct the new buildings. Everyone who knows DTCP in our state knows what kind of corruption happened there under the DMK. We waited patiently for DTCP approval for the new school buildings but the approval never came as long as the DMK was in power. The approval came automatically once the government changed. It is this DTCP approval that I posted about in X. I want to once again appreciate the refreshing change. Not only did the approvals come, government people told us not to pay money to anyone for any approvals. I have to appreciate this in public, having endured what we had endured before. This is the "lie" that DMK wants to attack me on. I do not need their certificate on my character. They can examine their conscience and ask why a technology nerd like me who is mostly immersed in code would post these. If they think I would back down by their vile personal attacks because I am a Brahmin or TVK Stooge or Sanghi or whatever, I will tell them this: unlike you dynasts I grew up with nothing. I studied in Tamil medium schools. I know how to live on nothing. I have dedicated the remainder of my life to make Bharat self reliant in technology while reviving our rural areas, the soul of our eternal sanatana civilization. I will not be intimidated by their attacks. I am unafraid of death, why would I be afraid of the mere DMK? And if they had any conscience they can return the money they looted (they know there they keep it) and then they can attack my character. I will now go back to optimizing the code of our compiler!

We launched our Zoho ERP platform, built for India, from Kumbakonam today and also announced plans for expansion in the rural region around Kumbakonam. Rural Development through Research and Development!

Canary Wharf, London ad. Part of our brand marketing push globally.

Even as our Arattai team is scaling up and fine tuning the product, our other product teams are hard at work. Last year Zoho became an RBI authorized payment aggregator in India and launched our online payment solutions. We are now deepening our fintech footprint by unveiling our all-new Zoho Payments Point-of-Sale (POS) Devices. With our new devices, businesses can accept in-person payments while staying seamlessly connected to their broader ecosystem. As part of our broader push in global fintech and payments, we have partnered with NPCI’s NBBL to address real business challenges and strengthen India’s digital payments infrastructure. (Yes, on the consumer front, Arattai will integrate Zoho Pay, please give us some time!)

In other news, we have launched Vani, which does fresh thinking on team collaboration. We call Vani the all-in-one, visual-first intelligent platform. Vani sparks creativity! It represents many years of R&D and we already have customers using it and loving it. Please try it with your team (Vani is desktop/browser only right now, mobile will come in due course). You can check it out at vanihq.com/ Here is a video:

My brother Kumar wrote a post titled: "How patient execution beats aggressive capital" which is a must read for entrepreneurs: zoho.com/the-long-game/patie… Kumar started the company in Chennai that eventually became the Zoho today. Practically every senior manager at Zoho was personally recruited fresh from college and trained by Kumar back in the 1990s. Zoho would not exist without Kumar. I want to quote this gem from his post: "முயலும் வெல்லும் (the hare can win) ஆமையும் வெல்லும் (the tortoise can also win) முயலாமை என்றுமே வெல்லாது (but not trying never wins)" The word "Muyalaamai" in Tamil combines "muyal" (rabbit or hare) and "aamai" (tortoise) and it also means "not trying" and Muyalaamai comes from the word "muyarchi" which means "effort" or "trying". So it means "Go fast like a rabbit or go slow like a tortoise but keep trying" but the Tamil version is much more poetic.