Zoho's Chinese bet
Zoho today announced it has entered a white label distribution deal with Baihui for distribution of its applications in China. Today, the deal includes Writer, Sheet, Show and CRM under Baihui's branding. Assuming the deal works well, then it is understood the arrangement will be extended to include other applications.
This is how the branding will operate:
- Zoho Writer - Baihui Xiexie
- Zoho Sheet - Baihui Gege
- Zoho Show - Baihui Xiuxiu
- Zoho CRM - Baihui CRM
Apart from CRM, which will be charged at 99RMB per user per month from the fourth user onwards, the other services will be free of charge.
It's easy to forget there is a very large global market. As Zoli Erdos notes:
China...has surpassed the USA as the No. 1 nation in Internet users., so of course it’s a huge market that SaaS providers would love to enter.
Given reported levels of piracy in China for Microsoft software, free offerings make good business sense. What interests me is that Baihui believes the concept of CRM travels to the point where it represents a viable business proposition in China. Assuming the deal is commercially successful, it will give encouragement to other vendors looking for ways to enter the world's largest business software market.In the meantime, I hope that Zoho will keep us updated on takeup in that geography.
