Two days ago, India’s Information Technology and Electronics Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw had asked people to substitute foreign tech products with India-made alternatives like Zoho, and he seems to be already putting his words into practice.
India’s IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw has shared a presentation that he made using Zoho Show instead of Microsoft Powerpoint. “Switch to Swadeshi! Cabinet briefing using Zoho Show,” he posted on X.
“In the spirit of Swadeshi, I’ve made today’s presentation with Zoho. I’ve used Zoho, not Microsoft Powerpoint,” he was heard saying in the video at the beginning of the presentation.
The presentation seemed pretty slick. There was an initial slide which said “Cabinet Briefing”, with a interesting design over it.
The slides had a limited amount of text, and large pictures that showed off the progress of railways projects.
There was even a slide with an interesting infographic with text on it.
Zoho Show is Zoho’s counterpart to Microsoft Powerpoint. Like Powerpoint, it lets users quickly create slides and presentations. Zoho Show is integrated with Zia AI, which uses AI to automatically create presentations and design them. There are several templates that allow users to get started, and many designs and fonts.
India’s IT Minister’s move to Zoho comes right after the US had tightened H-1B visa requirements, and begun charging a fee of $100,000 per new visa issued. The requirement makes it harder for Indian tech workers to find work in the US. But US companies like Microsoft and Google have hundreds of millions of users in India. There has been concern around Indians relying so extensively on foreign services —Microsoft, for instance, had earlier banned its services for an Indian company over links with Russia, later restoring them after outrage on social media.
The Indian government now seems to be hitting back, with the IT Minister not only saying that he’s switching to Zoho, but also showing that he’d begun using Zoho products for official purposes. Vaishnaw’s posts are clearly a sign encouraging Indian government officials and citizens to switch away from American tech products, and give Indian products a chance. And if this initiative takes off, companies like Zoho might end up finding a big new userbases in the country of their origin.