Zoho Corp., a software development company based in India, introduced its Vertical Relief Plan (VRP) aimed at assisting businesses and organizations severely impacted by the effects of COVID-19.

At the earlier stage of the current crisis, Zoho introduced several initiatives to assist the broader business community, including the Small Business Emergency Subscription Assistance Program and Remotely.

The VRP is a targeted effort to provide maximum assistance for businesses and organizations within the retail, education, and non-profit and government sectors that have been most critically hit during this crisis.

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In addition to these programs, Zoho is encouraging small businesses, as well as finance, sales, marketing, and HR professionals within larger organizations to utilize discounts, training, and support programs that the company is offering to help them adapt to their changing roles during this time.

“We are so grateful to all the workers who are helping us weather this storm,” said Sridhar Vembu, co-founder and CEO, Zoho. “Beyond those on the front lines, there are workers in industries who are struggling, who are persevering, who are inventing new paths forward. The Vertical Relief Plan is a way to support those people, whether they be teachers, government workers, or retailers, who are entirely committed to helping others and returning the world to solid ground.”

Education

Zoho Classes, available for early access, is a new mobile application that enables educational and training institutes to serve their students online. This platform replaces the need for educators to deploy multiple, disintegrated apps including video content delivery, classroom communication apps, assignment management tools, as well as video-lesson and project-creation applications, and instead build the class on one platform.

Using Zoho Classes, teachers and institutions can upload courses, broadcast live classes, share assignments under set deadlines, and collect responses on one interface.

Zoho Classes is built with several layers of security ensuring the privacy and safety of users: In Zoho Classes, teachers and students log in to the same application, which means that anything being sent or received can be centrally monitored by the school principal or an administrator. Students can only join a group after an invitation is sent directly from their school.

Non-profit, governments

Zoho Creator COVID-19 App program helps non-profits, government bodies, and communities that are working on various programs like patient monitoring or food distribution to execute their mission more efficiently with the help of apps. These organizations can place a request, and Zoho will build web and mobile apps for free using Zoho Creator, a low-code application development platform.

Zoho Desk can organize the COVID-19 relief initiatives of government agencies and departments around the world. The program helps government agencies and support agents manage high volumes of support tickets during this period by setting up FAQs, and prioritizing high-level inquiries where human agents can advise contextually to questions posed.

Zoho is currently offering free software licenses of Zoho Desk, the company’s help desk software.

To aid organizations that rely heavily on social media in terms of information dissemination, Zoho Social is opening up its advanced edition for free for six months. It is also honoring extension requests from users as well as providing educational guidance and tool improvements to aid users working remotely.

Zoho Checkout, which is available for free, can fast-track the release of donations to immediately disburse to beneficiaries.