Union IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said he is moving to Zoho’s suite of productivity tools, calling on others to adopt Indian products in line with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s appeal for “swadeshi.”
“I am moving to Zoho – our own Swadeshi platform for documents, spreadsheets & presentations. I urge all to join PM Shri @narendramodi Ji’s call for Swadeshi by adopting indigenous products & services,” Vaishnaw posted on X.
The move comes a day after Modi, in his Sunday address, urged citizens to cut reliance on foreign goods, saying many imported items have quietly become part of daily life.
Zoho, headquartered in Tamil Nadu, is one of India’s biggest homegrown software firms, with over $1 billion in annual revenue and a portfolio of 80-plus applications that rival Microsoft 365, Google Workspace and Salesforce.
Founder and CEO Sridhar Vembu called the minister’s switch “a huge morale boost” for Zoho’s engineers, adding, “We will make you proud and make our nation proud.”
The announcement also comes as India and the US spar over tariffs, with Washington imposing duties of up to 50 percent on imports from India.
Last week, IndiaAI Mission announced the selection of eight firms for the second phase of its foundation model initiative, which is focused on building sovereign AI. Vaishnaw felicitated the newly selected startups and has repeatedly stressed that the goal for each selected team is to become a global top-five player in their chosen sector, whether in multilingual foundation models, speech AI, or multimodal applications.
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