Building Business Software from Bang in the Middle of Nowhere — Part 1

Let me begin by putting the ‘middle of nowhere’ part in perspective. Here is the Zoho Technologies building that lies outside Tenkasi, a tiny, tranquil town in South India.

If you step out of the gate, what you see, for miles and miles on either side, is something like this:

It is hard to find any human construction around the campus. But if you travel all the way into the heart of Tenkasi, a sole skyscraper stands out in your view.

Clearly, this is no software company, financial firm, or trade center. It is the Kasi Viswanathar temple built by the Pandya king Parakrama in the year 1505 AD.

This remote location, left unmaimed by the hands of time, has been office to a team of Zoho developers for the past five years. They built, maintain, and update our customer support product, Zoho Desk from here.

Launched in late 2016, Zoho Desk is already showing many signs of success. Independent software research companies G2 Crowd, Software Advice, and GetApp have called it a leader. Further, it is an Editor’s choice in PC mag. It has also won high profile customers from around the world, including Avianca airlines in the US, University of New South Wales in Australia and Tata Power in India. “Zoho Desk is fast, easy to use, and has all the features we need at a very low cost,” says Maximillian Richter, who works for Hafele, a company specializing in construction hardware and electronic access control systems. “I can recommend it as the best solution currently available in the market.”

I work out of our office located in Chennai, which is a big, busy city, so how the Desk team pulled it off is something I myself found hard to understand. There were a lot of questions. How does one find and retain talent at a location like Tenkasi? How can the resources they need be provided for? How can they be groomed in the skills required in a niche field like Saas software development? And perhaps most importantly, what is the whole point of it all anyway?

To find answers, I travelled to Tenkasi and caught up with my colleagues there. I interviewed the people who worked to set up this office. Based on what I gathered, here is the story of how and why we build business software from bang in the middle of nowhere.

The Genesis

I learnt that staying away from the limelight of crowded cities is a principle Zoho has followed right from the outset. Our offices in Chennai and California are also not in sought after tech-parks but on the outskirts of major metropolitan areas.

This choice stemmed from the belief that concentrating all development in cities is no longer a good idea. On the one hand, it causes prices to shoot up, and on the other, the congestion brings down our standard of living. It forces us to live and work out of cramped spaces, get held up in traffic for hours, and wait in long lines for almost everything. “This is our own making, things needn’t be this way,” says Mani Vembu, the COO of Zoho. “Your buildings can go higher and higher, but if you step outside, the roads are still flat!”

Moreover, when businesses move to new areas, economic development soon follows. “For each high productivity job you create, you are also creating many more jobs to service that,” says Mani. “For a 100K job, up to 80K could get spent in the same area and this money could reach eight different people. This is how development happens.”

This thinking is not without precedent. He points out how a lot of development happened in the area around Cupertino since the Apple office was set up. The ‘Hidden Champions’ of Germany are another source of inspiration. These are small and medium businesses that make niche products. Few people have heard about them. Still, in the market for these products, they are ranked top in the world. They set up shop in inconspicuous locations and one or two of these hidden champions create a thriving economy around them.

These ideas led Sridhar Vembu, our CEO, to send some folks from our admin team out on a quest to find suitable lands for a remote office. The mandate given was ‘just any place far away from cities.’ Even tier 2 cities (metropolitan areas with a population of about 1–2 million) like Madurai and Tirunelveli were avoided. The search went on around smaller towns such as Theni, Kambam, Suruli, Kumbakonam, and Tanjavur. But it was difficult to get large portions of land here. Also, many of them were agricultural, and we didn’t want to disturb that. After a while, we did manage to buy a farm in a far flung place called Govindapperi. We’re doing some cultivation here, but as this is close to a forest, constructing office buildings here didn’t seem like a good idea.

Once, while returning from this farm, one of our admin folks saw something that looked like a shed. Upon closer inspection, it turned out to be a mill — and this meant it would have a commercial permit! When he probed further he found that the building and four acres of land around it was available for sale at a good price. We purchased it and this is the place where the Tenkasi office stands today!

Getting it going

“It was far easier to set up our Tenkasi office in 2012, than it was to set up the one in Chennai in 1996,” says Mani. Even in the big city, the internet connection had been slow and developers had to stay up nights to upload their builds. But today, since we buy so much in Chennai, it is easy to convince vendors to serve us at Tenkasi. High speed internet cables have been layed and contractors are helping us construct more buildings. A local vendor serves meals three times a day. He sources vegetables and other ingredients from the surrounding regions.

Life at Tenkasi

The team here is headed by Rakeeb Mohamed Mubeen, affectionately referred to by all as the Don. “When this office was announced, many people who came from this region opted to move. Most such people were from my team, so it happened for us.” he says. Don himself moved to Tenkasi in 2013. “Initially my wife was a little reluctant. There are big theatres and malls in Chennai but no such things in Tenkasi. So I brought her here and showed her around. I told her, we could stay in a much bigger house. Also,we are able to buy most things online. The food is pure and organic. The commute to work is much shorter, so I am able to spend a lot more time with my family. Seeing all this, she became happy to move. But she grumbles if I don’t take her to the city and keep her here for long!”

He also has many good things to say about the work culture. “Everyone in this office knows everyone else. There is close bonding. Many of us stay in the same neighborhood and our families have gotten to know each other too. There are lots of places around for trekking and scenic routes to go on long motor-bike rides. Such expeditions fill up the weekends for many youngsters. As cost of living is lower, it is also possible to save money.”

All this seems to have a positive impact on work. “Due to the short commutes people end up spending more time at office. So we’re able to work in a more relaxed way. We have lots of non-work discussions too. Attrition is very low. Barring a few exceptions, no one has left.”

Hiring and Nurturing Talent

The hiring is done mostly by recruiting freshers on campus from the engineering colleges in the surrounding regions. For many students, this office is closest to their native towns and villages by a long shot, so they join happily. “We get the cream of the crop as there is practically no competition,” says Don. “We recently conducted a written test to hire 10 people. 1200 candidates appeared for the test, all knowing very well that the job is in Tenkasi.”

Zoho University is another initiative that helps add to our workforce. We hire students straight from school and make them go through a curriculum focused on the needs of our work. And they are ready to join our teams in one year. Along with help from regular employees, three full time teachers form the mentoring force of the Tenkasi division of Zoho University. This is headed by Pravin Madhavan.

“Basic education is not good here,” he says. “We have to ramp the students up. During the first three months they are given a proper foundation.” Apart from technical subjects such as programming, students are also coached in English and Mathematics. After this, they are put in one of four streams; development, design, testing, or support. “We see what interests them, we see where they put in that extra effort and we groom them accordingly. Looking back, most students feel happy with the streams they chose.”

But getting into Zoho University is no child’s play. For a recent batch, about 3600 students appeared for an entrance test out of which only 36 where selected. “So everyone here is literally one in a hundred. And my goal is to make them ‘Ayirathil Oruvan’ (one in a thousand),” says Pravin punning on the name of a movie that became popular here.

The Future

With both offices growing, how would we want to distribute people between them?

Today, the Tenkasi campus can support 400 employees. “We want to make it so compelling that employees prefer this office over Chennai,” says Mani. “After we reach a critical mass, this will become easier to accomplish. How did bowling alleys come up in Chennai? Some businessmen identified the need and created them. The same thing will happen in Tenkasi also. This applies to schools and hospitals too, it is all about reaching high enough numbers.”

“Going ahead, we have set ourselves a practical target of a 50–50 distribution between Chennai and Tenkasi,” he says. “Though the ideal case would be 0 Chennai and 100 Tenkasi,” he adds after a brief pause.

Note: For a drill down on how work is managed and coordinated between the Chennai and Tenkasi offices and what tools we use to accomplish this, do check out Part 2 of this post. And to make sure you don’t miss this and other posts follow Zoho Work Insights now.