New Delhi: The Union government has spent Rs 180.10 crore to migrate around 16.68 lakh official email accounts to a Zoho-backed platform, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) told the Lok Sabha Wednesday.
The ministry said pricing under the contract ranges from Rs 170 to Rs 300 per account per month for mailbox sizes between 30 GB and 100 GB.
MeitY initiated a procurement process in 2023 to modernise NIC’s email infrastructure. Zoho was selected through a Government e-Marketplace (GeM-CPPP) bidding process that included a proof of concept with shortlisted vendors and government users, the ministry said.
The reply described Zoho’s role as that of a “Master System Integrator (MSI)” providing a cloud-based solution while NIC continues to own and operate the system.
Migration gathered pace through 2025, with government departments advised to transition to the upgraded platform, and the scale of the shift becoming public in Parliament disclosures later that year.
The latest figures show that 16.68 lakh accounts have been moved so far.
Zoho is a Chennai-headquartered software firm co-founded by Sridhar Vembu, who has publicly advocated for domestic technology development and decentralised operations in India. The company positions its products as alternatives to global enterprise software providers and has expanded its role in government-facing infrastructure.
In comparison, enterprise email services offered by Google’s Gmail and Microsoft’s Outlook in India span a wide pricing range, from roughly Rs 125 to Rs 136 per user per month at entry level to over Rs 1,600 to Rs 1,700 for higher-tier plans, depending on storage and features.
While the government’s per-user cost falls within this range, the ministry said the project “emphasises ‘Make in India’ compliance” and ensures that “the Government retains full ownership of all data and intellectual property generated under the contract”.
It reiterated that “only email services provided by the National Informatics Centre (NIC) shall be used for official communication”.
(Edited by Amrtansh Arora)
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