Indian tech giant Zoho has thrown its weight behind Newcastle’s tech scene as sponsors of events in the region.
The privately owned firm, which has more than 40 million users globally including Amazon, Facebook, Netflix, HP, KPMG and Renault, is the headline sponsor of Plan Digital’s monthly Founders’ Friday events which take place at the Tuspark Eagle Lab co-working space in the city.
Zoho develops dozens of cloud-based products for new and growing businesses and visited one of the Founders’ Friday events in September after reading about the Newcastle Startup Week festival, which was held in May.
It has now offered to sponsor the events for the next six months, with a particular focus on helping local businesses understand how to use their Zoho Books accounting software to manage their finances better.
“Having experienced the entrepreneurial journey ourselves, we truly understand the needs of an entrepreneur,” said Sridhar Iyengar (pictured above), head of operations for Zoho in Europe.
“We grew organically over the last 22 years and today 40 million users use our platforms globally.
“Our efforts in building products have solely been to reduce the technology barrier for any company to grow their business.
“We are impressed with the founders community in Newcastle and excited to associate our brand with the Founders’ Friday events.”
Paul Lancaster, founder and director at Plan Digital, said: “I was surprised and delighted when the Zoho team got in touch as they are a huge company with a fantastic range of cloud products covering everything you need to run a business including accounting, CRM, sales, marketing, HR, IT and team collaboration tools.
“This is great validation for our Newcastle Startup Week, Newcastle Scaleup Summit and Founders’ Friday events as a way of not only engaging with the local business community but attracting the attention of global giants like Zoho who then want to invest time, money and resources into our region.”
Varun Singh, head of marketing at Zoho Books, will be speaking at the next free Founders’ Friday event taking place at the Tuspark Eagle Lab co-working space on Friday 30th November.