Zoho’s Competitive Advantage in Low-Code Application Development
Problem Statement
Figure out what is Zoho’s competitive advantage in the Low-Code Application Development Platform space (LCAP) and craft a strategy to win.
Brief Summary
Zoho Creator is a Low-Code Application Platform that is industry agnostic. We need to figure out the competitive advantage and craft a strategy to win in the market.
Here’s how we can do it:
- Find competitors
- Conduct a SWOT Analysis
- Identify our Competitive Advantage
- Create a Strategic Plan
Known Competitors
- Power Apps
- Betty Blocks
- Quickbase
- Caspio
- Outsystems
- Mendix
SWOT Analysis
Strengths
- Powerful yet flexible Drag & Drop Builder
- Large App Integration capability (600+)
- Highly Skilled Resources and Mature Technology
Weaknesses
- Need to learn an additional language to build products in Zoho Creator i.e., Deluge
- Lack of enough Brand Awareness around Zoho Creator
Opportunities
- LCDP market will grow 10X by 2030.
- Leveraging B2B Influencer Marketing to further the adoption of Zoho Creator
- Partnering up with Conglomerates having businesses in multiple verticals to grow exponentially
- Entering B2C Market with a Freemium Model
- More potential for enterprise penetration.
Threats
- LCDP Products that don’t require additional Language i.e., No-Code Tools
- New AI-driven entrants in the LCDP space
- Products offering Freemium model
Competitive Advantage
Cost Leadership
- Zoho Creator plans start from INR 1000/User/month which is quite cheaper as compared to competitor plans.
- This attractive pricing model gives Zoho Creator an undue edge over competitors.
- Zoho Creator has cost leadership which is also evident from customer feedback.
Differentiation & Innovation Leadership
- Zoho Creator, being a mature product, has created innovative leadership.
- Deluge is an example of that.
- We also need to create a broad market differentiation strategy.
Strategic Plan
Target Audience
- Startups
- SMBs
- Enterprise
Vision
To be the worldwide market leader in low-code application development by keeping the cost leadership and focusing more on the differentiation leadership.
Plan
Overcome our weaknesses
- Deluge can stall our growth. Therefore, we should be as independent of the language as possible. This can be done by introducing another user-friendly language such as Python, which is quite popular and would tone down the learning curve of the user and prompt more user adoption.
Leverage our strengths
- We have cost leadership while having highly skilled resources.
- We should keep using that to our advantage and keep innovating.
- This means setting up an R&D team inside the Creator team whose sole focus would be to work on new features that our competitors don’t have.
- A basic action outline would be to test out a new feature (however small but moving fast) every 2-4 sprints.
Tap into the opportunity in the market
- The B2C market is packed with competitors like Bubble. But Zoho is a much bigger player and we shouldn’t miss out on the opportunity to tap the B2C market with mature products.
- Creator Economy is worth billions and that can be an additional market to expand to.
- We should also sign MoUs with conglomerates to accelerate our growth. Conglomerates can be our high-ticket clients and can help us grow financially as well as with user adoption.
Market the product better
- Having talked to about 15 people in the no-code/low-code space, I came to the conclusion that a lot of them don’t know enough about Zoho Creator.
- This showcases that we need to market Creator better. This can be done by creating signature events such as Hackathons and Influencer marketing campaigns.