Overview

• Officials say about 12 lakh Central government mailboxes, including the PMO, have been migrated from an NIC-run system to Zoho over the past year while retaining gov.in and nic.in domains.
• The transition followed a 2023 competitive tender that awarded Zoho a seven-year contract, with officials citing assessments by NIC and CERT-In and ongoing audits by Software Quality Systems.
• Zoho co-founder Sridhar Vembu said the company received formal approval after 15–20 audits of its code, data centres and security practices, adding that more than 1.5 million users are now onboard.
• On October 3, the Ministry of Education directed departments to promote Zoho’s office suite to advance a home-grown ‘product nation’ strategy and reduce risky use of unsecured open-source tools.
• Experts support the indigenous push but call for end-to-end encryption and independently verified on-shore data protections; Vembu says encryption is forthcoming, and MeitY signals support for multiple Indian vendors.