Indian Business Software Giant Zoho Launches Apps To Help Study And Work During COVID-19

Maheshwari Natarajan, founding principal of the Vidya Mandir Estancia school, situated just outside the southern Indian city of Chennai, had a number of unfinished academic tasks when the nationwide lockdown was announced on March 23. The syllabus hadn’t been completed, exams were not done and academic progress reports were pending.

In a prescient move, the 60-year-old administrator—who teaches psychology to 11th and 12th-graders at the school, which follows the national Central Board of Secondary Education—had started trying out a new product the day before, on March 22, for conducting online classes. She familiarized herself with the app, which was offered by business software giant Zoho Corp., creating online lessons and trying it on a group of 11th and 12th-graders. The students completed assignments and tests, and Zoho kept tweaking the app as they went along.

Within 10 days, the entire school with 80 teachers—ranging in age from 25 to 60—and 890 students from third to 12th grade, were using the app. The students and teachers were spread all over the map from the city of Chennai to the neighboring district of Chengalpettu, plus nearby villages where some students had gone to stay with their grandparents. All they had to do was download the app on any device—Android or Apple; it could be on a tablet, laptop or desktop.