Atlassian vs Zoho: Founders, CEOs and History

Company facts

Founders

CEOs and their tenures

Timeline: Atlassian and Zoho side by side

1. 1996Zoho

   AdventNet founded

   Sridhar Vembu and Tony Thomas start a network management software company.

2. 2002Atlassian

   Company founded by Mike Cannon-Brookes and Scott Farquhar in Sydney

   Mike Cannon-Brookes and Scott Farquhar founded Atlassian with $10,000 in credit card debt while students at the University of New South Wales. They launched Jira, a bug-tracking and project management tool for software developers.

3. 2004Atlassian

   Launch of Confluence team collaboration platform

   Atlassian launched Confluence, a team collaboration and documentation platform that complemented Jira and expanded the addressable market beyond software development into general team collaboration and knowledge management.

4. 2005Atlassian

   Reaches $1 million in annual revenue with no salespeople

   Atlassian reached $1 million in annual revenue entirely through self-service online sales, validating the product-led growth model and demonstrating that enterprise software could be sold without a traditional sales force.

5. 2005Zoho

   First Zoho Products Released

   AdventNet released Zoho Writer, its first online office application, in 2005, followed by Zoho CRM.

6. 2009Zoho

   Renamed Zoho Corporation

   The company takes the name of its online applications brand.

7. 2010Atlassian

   Raises $60 million from Accel Partners

   Atlassian raised its first outside investment, $60 million from Accel Partners, after eight years of bootstrapped growth. The money went to product development and international expansion, not to building a sales force.

8. 2012Atlassian

   Acquisition of HipChat for real-time messaging

   Atlassian acquired HipChat, an enterprise messaging platform, entering the real-time communication market and expanding the product suite beyond project management and documentation.

9. 2015Atlassian

   Initial public offering on NASDAQ

   Atlassian completed its IPO on the NASDAQ Global Select Market, raising $462 million at a valuation of $4.37 billion. Shares were priced at $21 and rose 32% on the first day to close near $28.

10. 2017Atlassian

    Acquisition of Trello for $425 million

    Atlassian acquired Trello, a visual task management platform built on Kanban boards, for $425 million in cash and stock. The deal extended its reach to non-technical teams and smaller organizations, complementing Jira.

11. 2017Zoho

    Zoho One Launched

    Zoho launched Zoho One, a single subscription covering its business applications, in July 2017.

12. 2018Atlassian

    Launch of Jira Service Management

    Atlassian launched Jira Service Management, entering the IT service management market and extending Jira from software development into IT operations and service desk work.

13. 2020Atlassian

    Acquisition of Mindville for asset management

    Atlassian acquired Mindville, an IT asset management company, to add asset and configuration management to Jira Service Management for enterprise customers.

14. 2021Atlassian

    Acquisition of Chartio for data visualization

    Atlassian acquired Chartio, a cloud data visualization and analytics company, to improve reporting across the product suite. The standalone Chartio product was later discontinued.

15. 2022Atlassian

    Acquisition of Percept.AI for AI virtual agents

    Atlassian acquired Percept.AI, an AI virtual agent company, to add automated ticket handling to Jira Service Management ahead of its broader AI push.

16. 2023Atlassian

    Acquisition of Loom for approximately $975 million

    Atlassian acquired Loom, an asynchronous video messaging platform, for about $975 million, its largest acquisition by announced value, adding recorded video to Jira and Confluence workflows.

17. 2024Atlassian

    Launch of Rovo AI assistant

    Atlassian launched Rovo, an AI assistant embedded across its products, providing search, summarization, automation, and agents that draw on the Teamwork Graph.

18. 2024Atlassian

    Server end-of-life forces cloud and data center migration

    Atlassian ended support for its Server product line in February 2024, requiring remaining on-premises customers to move to either Cloud or Data Center subscriptions.

19. 2025Atlassian

    Launch of Atlassian Collections

    Atlassian began selling Collections, bundles of apps and AI agents priced around an outcome rather than per product: the Teamwork Collection, Software Collection, Service Collection, and Strategy Collection.

20. 2025Atlassian

    Announces end of life for Data Center products

    On September 8, 2025, Atlassian announced the end of life of its Data Center products under a migration program called Atlassian Ascend.

21. 2025Atlassian

    Acquisition of The Browser Company of New York

    Atlassian completed the acquisition of The Browser Company of New York, maker of the Dia and Arc browsers, on October 20, 2025, for a total purchase price of $488.3 million, taking the company into enterprise browsers.

22. 2025Atlassian

    Acquisition of engineering intelligence vendor DX

    Atlassian acquired A Software Company, which trades as DX, on November 10, 2025 for $720.4 million in cash. DX measures how engineering investment turns into delivered work and is being folded into Atlassian Collections.

23. 2025Zoho

    CEO transition

    Shailesh Kumar Davey becomes group CEO in January; Sridhar Vembu becomes chief scientist.

24. 2025Zoho

    Semiconductor fab plan shelved

    Zoho suspends its planned $700 million compound semiconductor fab in May.

25. 2025Zoho

    Rajesh Ganesan becomes CEO

    Rajesh Ganesan became CEO of Zoho in 2025. Leads the ManageEngine IT management division.

26. 2026Atlassian

    Restructuring eliminates roles covering about 10% of the workforce

    Atlassian initiated a second restructuring plan in the third quarter of fiscal 2026, eliminating roles covering approximately 10% of its workforce to fund investment in AI and enterprise sales.

27. 2026Atlassian

    Rovo reaches over 80% of the Fortune 500

    Atlassian reported that Rovo was in use at over 80% of Fortune 500 companies and that its MCP server and Teamwork Graph CLI passed one million monthly active users in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2026, more than doubling in a quarter.

28. 2026Zoho

    UAE data centres open

    Zoho opens data centres in Dubai and Abu Dhabi in January as part of an ~$27.2 million (AED 100 million) UAE investment.

29. 2026Zoho

    FY25 results filed

    RoC filings show FY25 revenue of ~$1.43 billion (₹12,313 crore) and net profit of ~$370 million (₹3,191 crore).

Acquisitions

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