Zoho Corporation, the parent company of ManageEngine and Zoho, has introduced Nathu La, a server platform designed in India that represents a significant milestone in the company's long-term strategy to gain greater control over its technology ecosystem.
The new platform reflects Zoho’s efforts to manage every layer of its infrastructure stack, spanning hardware, data centres, software applications, and artificial intelligence models.
Developed over a period of five years by Zoho’s engineering teams based in Nagpur, Nathu La has been designed to deliver performance comparable to existing enterprise servers while consuming 12-18% less power and reducing total cost of ownership (TCO) by 20-30%.
The server is powered by Intel Xeon 6 processors and was built in collaboration with Intel. Zoho has already begun deploying the platform within its own infrastructure.
The launch comes at a time when India’s digital economy is expanding rapidly, yet much of the server hardware used across the industry continues to be sourced from international manufacturers.
According to Ramprakash Ramamoorthy, Director – AI Research at Zoho and ManageEngine, the significance of Nathu La lies in the company’s ability to own critical design and engineering expertise across its infrastructure stack.
Although key hardware components such as Intel’s Xeon 6 processors are imported, Zoho has developed the overall architecture, firmware, systems management software, power delivery systems, and workload-specific optimisations internally.
Discussing the importance of indigenous design capabilities, Ramamoorthy stated:
"The base chip is imported, but there is a lot of deltas to it,"
He further added:
"The design know-how seems very important. We are just barely scratching the surface, and we are just one private company trying to do it,”
The project highlights a broader trend within India’s technology sector, where companies are increasingly investing in local engineering capabilities to reduce dependence on imported technologies.
The Nathu La platform has been specifically engineered to support a wide range of modern computing requirements.
According to Zoho, the server motherboard and chassis architecture have been optimised for workloads such as:
Artificial Intelligence (AI) inference
Virtualisation
High-performance computing (HPC)
Storage-intensive applications
The company has also designed critical modular components internally, including the Data Centre Secure Control Module (DC-SCM) and Network Interface Card (NIC). These components are assembled through Indian Electronics Manufacturing Services (EMS) partners.
Zoho has already filed more than five patents related to thermal management technologies and cost-optimised server architecture, underscoring its commitment to innovation in infrastructure engineering.
Unlike traditional server manufacturers, Zoho does not currently intend to sell Nathu La as a standalone commercial hardware product.
The company has already deployed approximately 1,000 Nathu La servers across its Indian data centres. With a network of 20 data centres worldwide, Zoho plans to gradually expand usage of the platform across additional workloads while continuing to operate alongside global OEM servers.
Explaining the company’s approach, Ramamoorthy said:
"We have built this very purpose-built for our own use cases,"
He added:
"We know the use case, we narrow it down, we fine-tune it."
The launch is closely linked to Zoho’s growing artificial intelligence ambitions.
As AI adoption accelerates globally, the cost of running large-scale inference workloads continues to rise. By operating its own servers, software platforms, and data centres, Zoho aims to improve efficiency while maintaining tighter control over performance and costs.
Highlighting the advantages of this approach, Shailesh Davey, CEO of Zoho Corp., stated:
"With AI advancements, inference costs are rising rapidly. With our strategy of using contextual, right-sized models, running on our own platform, on our own servers, in our own data centres, we are compounding the benefits accrued from owning and operating our entire technology stack,"
Zoho’s proprietary large language model, ZLLM, introduced last year, has already been integrated across multiple products. The company is currently working on larger 32-billion and 100-billion parameter AI models.
According to Ramamoorthy, over 85% of customers prefer Zoho’s built-in AI services instead of relying on external AI providers, indicating strong adoption of the company’s in-house AI ecosystem.
The Nathu La initiative also reflects Zoho’s focus on developing technology talent beyond major metropolitan hubs.
The project was developed at Zoho’s Nagpur facility and supported by SETU (Student's Engagement for Transformative Upskilling), a programme dedicated to Electronics System Design and Manufacturing (ESDM).
Aligned with the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology’s skill development initiatives, the programme has trained more than 300 engineering students across Central India. Several participants contributed directly to the development of the Nathu La platform.
While the company remains focused on internal deployments, Zoho sees potential opportunities to expand the platform’s reach in the future.
According to Ramamoorthy, one possible next step could involve offering enterprise and government customers servers that come preloaded with Zoho software solutions. However, the company has not announced any specific timeline for such plans.
The launch of Nathu La marks an important milestone in Zoho’s journey toward greater technological self-reliance and vertical integration. By designing key infrastructure components in-house and combining them with its software, cloud, and AI capabilities, Zoho is creating a tightly integrated technology ecosystem that could deliver significant efficiency and cost advantages.
While the platform is currently intended for internal use, Nathu La demonstrates how Indian companies can increasingly contribute to advanced infrastructure design and innovation. As AI adoption grows and demand for efficient computing infrastructure rises, Zoho’s investment in indigenous engineering capabilities may position the company as a leading example of India’s evolving technology ambitions.