In a move to enhance security and decrease reliance on Google products, the state governments are preparing to shift to Zoho Mail entirely, a report said. This comes days after Central government offices and ministries made the move and even Union Home Minister Amit Shah announced moving to Zoho Mail.
The central government offices recently switched from the National Informatics Centre (NIC) platform to Zoho Mail, in what is being referred to as a larger initiative aimed at driving indigenous technology solutions and improving cybersecurity across government networks.
Around 12 lakh staff’s emails have been switched from NIC to Chennai-based Zoho, reported NDTV.
Centre’s Zoho move – the plan and execution
In an interview, Union IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said that the government had decided to implement Zoho almost three years ago. The process of rollout, he added, began with ministries. “Prior to its rollout across the government, we initiated it in the Ministry of Electronics two and a half years ago. Then it was rolled out to Railways, the Information and Broadcasting Ministry, and later to all the central government employees,” the minister further said, quoted NDTV.
Now, the employees are using the complete utility resource of Zoho, including substitutes for Google Docs, Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and other internal communication tools, he said.
“Global and Indian organisations were assessed on several parameters. First, Google received 8.9, Microsoft 8.8, and Zoho 8.6. We told Indian companies to match up, and within six months, Zoho upgraded its security features. Post tendering, Zoho’s bid was the best, and the company was chosen,” Vaishnaw reportedly said.
The report added that the Gujarat government has already switched to Zoho Mail, and other states will soon follow suit.
As per the report, the move will not modify the email domains of the government (nic.in and gov.in), but the data processing and hosting are what now have been shifted to Zoho’s cloud platform. The company was given a seven-year contract back in 2023 following competitive bidding, the report mentioned.
Zoho – India’s ‘swadeshi platform’
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, for the last few months, have been stressing on using ‘Make in India’ products. He said that it was essential to boost the country’s economy by supporting everything that is being made here. This was on the backdrop of 50% US tariffs on imports from India. PM Modi said that the biggest enemy of India was “dependency on others”, that the country will have to fight and end.
Zoho’s Sridhar Vembu introduced the Mail services and the same was adopted by the government, and other offices. As for security, the government said Zoho’s systems were thoroughly checked by several agencies, including NIC, CERT-In (Computer Emergency Response Team-India), and Software Quality Systems (SQS).
The move is aimed at reaching complete digital sovereignty, and to innovate indigenous product for the world.