By Prince Osuagwu, Hi-Tech Editor & Juliet Umeh

Global technology company, Zoho, is setting a high benchmark in Nigeria that will be difficult for its competitors to match.

The office suite solution provider has already grown by 50 percent in just one year of operation in the country.

Hungry for more inroads into the technology sector, the company quickly sealed a partnership with a Startup ecosystem development and advocacy organization and a community of founders building high scale ventures in Nigeria with focus on the South-South and South-East regions, known as #StartupSouth.

Part of this partnership, will see startups associated with #StartupSouth, avail themselves of Zoho Wallet credits worth ? 470,000.

The credit can be used to purchase or upgrade any of Zoho’s more than 55 products, including Zoho One, the operating system for business, over a period of 360 days. Zoho One offers a unified platform that brings together over 50 Zoho products from CRM to HR management. The startups will also receive training to help them leverage Zoho’s products for their growth and in a way that they can easily scale.

An excited Convener of the community, Uche Aniche, said:  “One of #StartupSouth’s goals is to provide startups associated with us easy access to comprehensive tech solutions that offer great value, are easy to use, and have the capability to grow with the businesses as they scale. We are happy to partner with Zoho, as they offer a wide range of business apps that can empower startups to quickly digitalise most of their business areas in one go, and streamline and unify their operations for better management and holistic visibility. With this partnership with Zoho, we are looking forward to helping budding businesses by removing access barrier to enterprise technology.”

Regional Director, MEA, Zoho, Ali Shabdar said: “Our growth is a direct result of Nigerian businesses embracing cloud technology, especially unified platforms, to digitally transform and build resilience to adapt to challenging market conditions. Zoho’s unified technology stack, built from the ground up, allows us to meet such transformation needs of businesses with robust solutions that deliver consistently seamless user experiences at unbeatable value.

“Zoho’s growth in Nigeria is primarily driven by adoption of Zoho One, the operating system for business, and Zoho Workplace, a unified enterprise collaboration platform. Additionally, Zoho CRM Plus (unified customer experience platform), Zoho Books (accounting software), and Zoho Desk (helpdesk software) are the other top-selling products in the country.