Zoho Corporation today forayed in to Andhra Pradesh by opening an office in Renigunta, 10 km from Tirupati.

Andhra Pradesh chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu inaugurated the centre, and said a number of companies, including Zoho, will invest around ₹ 350 crore in Tirupati.

This is Zoho's third office in India after its international headquarters in Chennai and Tenkasi in southern Tamil Nadu.

Zoho's operating system for business provides a single platform with all applications needed to run a business completely from cloud. Over 30 million users globally use Zoho products to run their businesses. Headquartered in the US with international headquarters in Chennai , it is privately held and profitable with over 5,000 employees.

Zoho's CEO Sridhar Vembu said the new office has a capacity for 150 employees, who will be hired locally over next six-nine months. Zoho intends to expand further in the region and plans to build its own campus.

The new office will also house a branch of ZohoUniversity, Zoho's in-house training programme for skill development wherein high school students are recruited and trained in software programming over a period of 18 months, said Vembu.

Those who complete the course are recruited by the company as employees. Around 15 per cent of Zoho's 5,000 employees have come through this programme. Currently, Zoho University has branches in Chennai and Tenkasi, with a total strength of 100 students, he said.

Speaking at the inauguration function, Naidu said Tirupati has the advantage of being located in between Bengaluru, which has infrastructure problems, and Chennai, a big city.

"In the past, while we used to do software job works, I used to insist companies to do products, which will bring more money. Today, in Silicon Valley the richest per capita income earners are Indians, and among them in the forefront are Telugu people," he said.

“If you start here, you will not go to Silicon Valley, and products will be exported from Vizag to Ananthpur, which will be Andhra Valleyf or future entrepreneurs. Now, you are talking about Silicon Valley, but in future it will be Andhra Valley,” he said.

Naidu said he had instructed State IT secretary to enable a blueprint to train around one crore IT literates by spending ₹ 250 crore in next one year. Every home, there will be one IT literate, and every home there will be one entrepreneur. “It is going to happen in course of time,” he said.

“I want to create an IT ecosystem in places like Tirupati, Vizag, Amaravati and Ananthapur,” he said.

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