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Zoho's government email deal vetted by 20 security audits, says Sridhar Vembu
The Zoho founder rejected suggestions that the adoption was sudden or politically motivated, describing the selection process as involving "stiff competition" and a "competitive make-off."
Amid scrutiny over the government's adoption of Zoho Mail for official communication, co-founder Sridhar Vembu confirmed on October 13 that the company's selection by the National Informatics Centre (NIC) followed an exhaustive vetting process, including nearly 20 security audits.
Vembu's remarks come as the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) has been moving to a secure cloud service for the NIC email solution, which services approximately 33 lakh government employees. Zoho Mail won the migration tender, and Vembu stated that over 1.5 million users are now onboarded.
"We went through at least about 15, maybe 20 audits of covering all of the areas of our code, our data center, our security practices, all of it. Extensive number of audits we have gone through. And only after that, the NIC team selected Zoho," Vembu told Moneycontrol.
The Zoho founder rejected suggestions that the adoption was sudden or politically motivated, describing the selection process as involving "stiff competition" and a "competitive make-off."
Vembu highlighted the growing support for indigenous technology, saying, "What is new is the whole push given to more Swadeshi software, some broader movement. In other words, I want to contrast the two things. Zoho was selected after a massive contest. Now, in the Swadeshi movement, we are also realizing this company is made in India. We must back this. We must promote this. We need these national champions."
MeitY Secretary S Krishnan reiterated the government’s broader focus, stating that while Zoho powers the NIC system, their “wider push will be for Indian products” in general, not just a single firm.
The migration push was internally intensified in July of this year after a global data leak, with government employees advised to switch to the new NIC email domain and platform, @mail.gov.in, managed by Zoho.
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