Zoho forays into IT hardware with an indigenously designed server platform

Chennai: Zoho Corp has built an indigenously designed and manufactured server platform as part of its plan to own the technology stack from hardware to end applications and reduce costs. The company designed key components, including the motherboard, microcontrollers, data centre secure control modules (DC-SCM), network interface cards, firmware and chassis, assembled locally through Indian EMS partners. It was developed in collaboration with Intel India, tapping their capabilities and technical expertise.

Zoho has long argued the case for owning the full stack, and the imperative sharpened as compute costs surged. The platform, named Nathu La, delivers 20%–30% lower total cost of ownership through reductions in both capex and opex, with the savings passed on to customers, Ramprakash Ramamoorthy, director of AI Research at Zoho Corp told TOI. “When we talk about AI, the emphasis goes back to hardware. The world is going through an AI frenzy and hardware prices have shot up. AI workloads have changed infrastructure reality, with prices of even traditional servers in June 2026 being four times higher than in Dec 2025. Rising inference costs, higher lead times and supply chain uncertainty make performance per watt more strategic,” he said.

The servers, built on Intel Xeon 6 processors, are designed for captive use in Zoho’s data centres in India and abroad, with about 1,000 units already deployed. They are capable of hosting smaller AI inference workloads, including host CPUs that orchestrate AI accelerators, with initial deployments covering CRM, video and email hosting. “With our strategy of using contextual, right-sized models running on our own platform, in our own data centres, we are compounding the benefits of owning our entire technology stack, making our solutions more sustainable and accessible,” said Shailesh Davey, CEO of Zoho Corp.

Zoho set up an R&D team in Nagpur in 2020 to build the platform, hiring and training local talent. The company did not disclose the investment. Mangesh Sadafale, head of hardware development, said the server is modular and optimised for virtualisation, high-performance computing, AI inference and storage workloads specific to Zoho’s needs. It consumes 12%–18% lower power and delivers lower TCO compared to global OEM servers in certain use cases, based on internal benchmarks. Zoho has also filed over five patents covering thermal management and cost-optimised server architecture, and has lined up additional hardware products.