Shridhar Vembu - From Silicon Valley to a village Entrepreneur in Tamilnadu

Situated at the foothills of the Western Ghats, Mathalamparai is a tiny village in Tenakasi district of Tamilnadu which is about 650 km from Chennai. The village is much popular today as it is the headquarters of Tech giant 'Zoho Corporation' which is the native village of Indian entrepreneur, co-founder and CEO of Zoho Corporation Sridhar Vembu. Shridhar is one of the most underrated CEO'S known so far. 

Approaching Roots

Shridhar was born in a farmer family  and got graduated in Electrical Engineering from IIT Madras. He completed his Ph.D from Princeton University in New Jersey. For a brief period ,he worked at Qualcomm and finally co founded AdventNet in 1996 along with his brother and friend. They produced software solutions and products when IT services were at the apex. In 2000, there was IT Bubble Blast and the company lost his 80% clients. In year 2002, they renamed the company as Zoho corporation and the company emerged as an online innovative application provider.

What is Zoho

Although Zoho is the top Software as a service Company (SaaS) and much popular name among business persons but still unknown to common man. Today Zoho is providing cloud based CRM solutions and designed about 40 apps in the areas of online accounting, inventory management and human resource. Small scale and medium scale companies are the target customers of the company who cannot purchase costly softwares. The company also provides about 55 softwares and apps in the field of marketing ,sales,help desk, finance ,IT, legal, customer solutions and project management. Nearly half of the business of Zoho comes from upmarket companies which have more than 1000 employees.Zoho has recently launched 13 AI applications and integrations which are powered by chat GPT. Zoho has also launched its own private server Ulaa by blending third party Intelligence with its AI engine Zia which operates on their own secure cloud. The new private browser of Zoho is having pre build capabilities that can block website servillance and tracking. Ulaa  is not sharing data with any third party. They are also going to build their own large language models similar to chat GPT.

The philosophy behind

Shridhar decided to come back to India in 2019 just before the outbreak of covid. When the world welcomed Work from home policy ,Vembu went for Work from Village. That Tagline of Zoho is - 'Made in India, Made for World'. Vembu firmly believes that world class products can be designed anywhere. He dreams of people working from villages catering to the global requirements and learning new skills. Currently Zoho has two rural offices- Tenakasi and Renigunta in Andhrapradesh. In one of his interview with Forbes India, he emphasizes that his employees should be mostly from the village as they will not only stay connected to the roots but also have a work life balance. The company plans to higher 50% of employees from small cities in future. He also hopes that city people will mentor and coach local rural youth for employment and recruitment in Zoho. He himself teachers Maths and Science in a local school as well as indulge in farming.

Stats to Reflect On

At present there are about 108 unicorns in the country. These are those companies which are not listed in share market.17 out of 18 unicorns have gained profits in last financial year. With the tremendous profit of 2700 crore rupees, Zoho ranks at the top among them. Zoho has no debt and it has also not  raised money through investments or selling the equity. The world's 300 Fortune companies out of top 500 companies have great reliance in Zoho. Zoho has 10 crore users with 15000 employees working worldwide. Company sales more than 55 products in more than 150 countries. The company has generated 6.7 crore rupees revenue in the previous year and marked 65% annual growth in upmarket. 

What's Special? 

Zoho has not entered the market with any extraordinary service or product. Company only focused on small businesses. Zoho provides services and solutions at cheaper rates to small businesses which are sold by big companies at higher rates. Zoho doesnot spends much on marketing instead it spends three times more on research and development which can maintain the quality of it's products. Company has collaborated with their customers as channel partners. These channel partners only fetch new customers by mouth publicity for them.This is all possible you to the philosophy of it's mentor Sridhar Vembu.

Honour

Vembu  has been awarded with Ernst and Young entrepreneur of the Year award 2019. He was earlier awarded with Padmashree, India's fourth highest civilian award. This village enterpreneur has been recently appointed in the board of National Security Advisory Board (NSAB) of India. 

Vembu is a great entrepuner having immense affinity for rural development. The world Looks for such great people eagerly!