They say you are what you eat. We say companies are what they spend on.

At its core, Zoho is more than a software company: It's a technology company. Over 60% of our investments go into engineering, giving us lots of technological depth to build new products and improve existing ones. We think this makes perfect sense.

With 60% of our investments going into engineering, we're able to increase productivity. Efficiency gains are then are passed on to customers through more affordable products.

We don't spend much on sales and marketing—after all, customers don't see much value in being sold to. The more we build, the stronger our suite becomes, giving customers even greater bang for the buck. We think that's the best marketing.

Businesses pay tech companies to help them with technology. You'd be surprised to learn how many tech companies pay to get help with theirs, too.

As a true technology company, Zoho builds and manages all the software infrastructure required to create and serve your applications. Custom firewalls, databases, load balancers—you name it, we do it. Our technical expertise spans the entire software stack.

We all know that the more costly a product's components, the more expensive the overall product will be. In the software industry, production costs rise when you have to license technology from other companies to make your products work.

Building from the ground up on our secure, scalable, in-house technology stack has allowed us to cut expensive vendors that most of our competitors need to operate. If your Zoho One invoice looks thin, it's because we've cut the fat from our data centers.

Rome wasn't built in a day, and neither was Zoho One. It's taken us the better part of 10 years to offer the broadest suite of business applications in the world. We've built the suite brick by brick—each application was crafted on the same infrastructure. We are the only company in the world who's done this, and the benefits are clear: Things work better when they were always meant to work together.

Built-in advantage

Software companies have two options when deciding to expand their product portfolio: Build or buy.

Buying companies to expand a product portfolio gets press coverage. But in reality, acquisitions are a costly, quick-and-dirty option funded by shareholder money. Sure, the acquiring company gets the app it wants, but it also gets lots of bloat—technological, departmental, cultural, and financial—that the customer ends up paying for.

Building, on the other hand, takes time; but we've found it pays off. When every application is built on the same technology stack, it doesn't carry the baggage that comes from acquisition. And with a little patience, we end up with products that are just as good, if not better, than ones we could have bought. In the end, we believe building is a better deal for us, and for customers.

We like doing business the old-fashioned way. You know, the kind where you make money and invest profits back into the company for long-term growth. If we're the last of the breed, then it's only to our advantage.

As a private, bootstrapped company, we're able to focus on what matters: improving the lives of our employees and customers, rather than finding better returns for investors. This is why we'll always stay private. This is why, in the era of tech unicorns, we're proud to be a strong and dependable workhorse.

We're able to focus on what matters: improving the lives of our employees and customers, rather than finding better returns for investors.