RIYADH: Indian software company Zoho Corp. is set to invest $30 million in Saudi Arabia to encourage technology adoption across its small and medium enterprises. During the second edition of the Saudi technology event LEAP 2023 in Riyadh, the company said it would allocate $30 million worth of wallet credit and annual digital training to advance technology reach in the SME sector in the Kingdom. “In 2022, Saudi Arabia was globally the fastest growing market for us. We have been doing extremely well here,” Hyther Nizam, president of the Middle East and African region of Zoho Corp., told Arab News. The company has been present in the Kingdom for the last five years and intends to bolster Saudi economic sustainability and its wide-sweeping digitalization goals. As part of its investment plans, the technology firm will also open its first office in Riyadh, besides its current office in Jeddah. It also plans to continue hiring local talent and expand in the UAE. “UAE and Saudi Arabia are Zoho’s top two markets in the Middle East and Africa region, with each presenting equally attractive opportunities for growth and expansion,” Sridhar Vembu, CEO and co-founder of Zoho, told Arab News. “Zoho’s fundamental vision is led by efforts to make innovative solutions accessible and affordable to businesses of all sizes. With this at the core, we allocate necessary resources to cater to these rapidly growing markets to empower more people and organizations.” The cloud software vendor has been in the business for 25 years and has around 12,000 employees. It has 80 million registered users using its software worldwide from over 50 countries. The company, explained Nizam, has over 55 applications catering to sales support, marketing, HR and finance, to list a few. “We have more than half a million registered organizations paying customers using Zoho,” he said. Zoho’s increased collaboration with local government entities has also led to its investment in digital infrastructure through Saudi’s Personal Data Protection Law. “Over the next year, we aim to continue leading the way in the MEA to make Saudi Arabia our No. 1 market in the region while allocating necessary resources to help achieve the goals of Vision 2030 by lowering the technical barriers to entry for the business community,” added Nizam. The cloud company also provides solutions in the Arabic language, including Zoho CRM, Zoho Creator, Zoho Desk and Zoho Bigin. Furthermore, its e-commerce platform Zoho Commerce is among the few vendors in the market to offer natively integrated Arabic language right-to-left capabilities that enable merchants to create e-commerce websites in Arabic. “Saudi is going through one of the biggest transformations in the world today with specific needs that the market has in terms of localization of language, features, compatibility, compliance with government and financial regulations,” Ali Shabdar, regional director of MEA, Zoho Corp. told Arab News.