Sridhar Vembu steps down as Zoho Corp CEO, takes up chief scientist's role

Chennai: Sridhar Vembu, the man behind the Software as a Service (Saas) major Zoho which continues to be a major competitor for global technology giants in the segment, on Monday quit as CEO of the $1 billion company to assume a newly created role as Chief Scientist to focus on “deep research and development initiatives.”

The 57-year-old Ph.D in electrical engineering from the US’ Princeton University said the decision to step down as CEO will also allow him pursue his personal rural development mission, besides focusing on R&D initiatives in “view of the challenges and opportunities facing the sector, including recent developments in artificial intelligence.”

Vembu, who was conferred with Padma Shri in 2021, moved from the US to a remote village in Tenkasi district of Tamil Nadu in 2019 months before Covid-19 pandemic struck the world. He continues to run Zoho Corporation from the hamlet, 630 km from Chennai, in the picturesque Western Ghats.

Shailesh Kumar Davey and Tony Thomas, co-founders, will be the new Chief Executive Officer and head of Zoho US respectively, while Rajesh Ganesan will lead the ManageEngine division, and his brother Mani Vembu will head the http://Zoho.com division.

Zoho, which reported a consolidated revenue of Rs 8,703 crore in the financial year 2023, up 29 per cent from Rs 6,710 crore earned in the previous fiscal, employs over 15,000 people. India is the third largest market for Zoho next only to the US and EU, with the company registering a vibrant presence in the Middle East, Latin America, Africa, and Mexico.

Zoho, which makes computer software, web-based business tools, online office suites, currently has 55 apps and many of them are quite popular, while the company’s project management SaaS is sought-after across the globe.

“The future of our company entirely depends on how well we navigate the R&D challenge, and I am looking forward to my new assignment with energy and vigor. I am also very happy to get back to hands-on technical work,” Vembu said in a terse statement on his X page.

Working as an engineer with technology giant Qualcomm, Vembu quit the company in 1996 along with his brothers to found AdventNet, which was renamed as Zoho Corporation in 2009. Till date, Zoho remains a privately controlled firm with Vembu often maintaining that he won’t go public and will never resort to lay-offs due to the company’s diversification in terms of product portfolio, geographic coverage of revenue and regions.

Unconventional in many ways, Vembu focused on hiring talented individuals who don’t have a degree and recruited many students after their plus-two and made them software engineers through hands-on training.

Vembu’s brainchild, the hub and spokes model of Zoho of its offices in tier-II and tier-III cities with three or more spokes under it in interior villages with each employing 100 persons, became popular during the Covid-19 pandemic with many software professionals relocating to their native places. As of April 2023, Zoho had five hub offices and 30 spoke offices in India.

In Tenkasi, Vembu runs a school which allows students to “think on their own” rather than follow textbooks and is quite active on social media giving advice or two on many social issues, especially the effects of alcoholism on the rural population. In a 2021 interview with DH, Vembu had said the school aims at transforming how children learn and that education needs to be “interactive and fun.”

Vembu stepping down as CEO of Zoho also triggered speculation whether he was looking at a political plunge at a later stage, if not immediately. The top honcho was at the centre of a raging row in 2020 after he accepted an invitation from the RSS’ IT Professionals’ Resurgent Bharath event.