IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw switches to Zoho's office suite in Swadeshi move

In a bid to promote homegrown products and services, electronics and information technology minister Ashwani Vaishnaw on Monday said he is switching to using Zoho's office suite software. In a post on social media platform X, Vaishnaw said he will be using Chennai-based Zoho's online office platform for documents, spreadsheets & presentations from now.

The Minister also called upon others to follow Prime Minister Narendra Modi's call for choosing Indian products and services over foreign ones. Vaishnaw's statement coincided with a renewed push by the government on buying 'swadeshi' and making India self reliant.



Earlier in the day, the PM stressed that the revised Goods and Services tax slabs will trigger a 'GST Bachat Utsav' from Sept 22 onwards, as consumer buying ramps up during the festive season.The income tax relief given earlier and this new regime will result in savings of over Rs 2.5 lakh crore for the people, he said.

IT company Zoho has worked closely Vaishnaw's ministry earlier as well.

In September, 2023 media reports had pointed out the Ministry of electronics and information technology had chosen Zoho to handle email services and a host of other internet-based office products. This was the first time a private contractor was chosen to manage the government's internal email services, which have traditionally been hosted and maintained by the National Informatics Services.

In March, the company's Ulaa browser won the Indian Web Browser Development Challenge by MeitY to create an indigenous web search platform, beating 433 other teams. In April, it was the Official Software as a Service (SaaS) Partner for the MeitY Startup Hub Deeptech Arena at Startup Mahakumbh 2025.