'No WFH': Sridhar Vembu explains why Zoho won't extend work from home after PM Modi's appeal

A recent appeal made by Prime Minister Narendra Modi urging people to adopt work from home to save fuel amid Middle East crisis still remains unanswered, with the companies opting for wait and watch approach.

However, Sridhar Vembu, co-founder of Zoho came forward and made it clear that his company has decided not to expand work from home.

In a post shared on X, explaining the reasons behind such a move, Vembu said that his company has reviewed its stance on the issue and realised that face-to-face collaboration works better in solving complex problems in an R&D setting. However, he said that Zoho is looking at alternative measures to address the concerns raised by PM.

"We are looking at electric bus fleets and electric cooking in our canteens to save fuel. We have made heavy investments in solar already," he wrote.

"Ultimately, after a lot of people inside weighed in on my X post, we decided not to expand WFH because the productivity of face-to-face problem solving is much higher in R&D."

"I have experienced this in my own development team — issues take longer to resolve when you are not meeting the people involved in solving the problem. Collaboration happens more fluidly face to face and we come up with better solutions," he explained.

His post quickly gained traction on X, triggering a wider discussion around hybrid work, productivity and employee expectations.

Some agreed with the Zoho co-founder. "No private company will incorporate WFH unless it becomes mandated by the government," one user wrote.

Another said, "I am with you on this, Sridhar. I advise several companies on this one point: get your teams back together in rooms. The power of the handshake, the camaraderie and the collaboration that can be achieved in person is impossible to match virtually."

A third argued on how the move would impact employee wellbeing and slammed the alternative ideas.

"You speak about electric buses, solar, and sustainability, but until transportation becomes completely electric at scale, thousands of employees commuting every day still means congestion, pollution, time loss and unnecessary stress. A modern company should balance productivity with employee well-being, commute realities and environmental impact instead of treating office presence as the only solution," a comment read.

Anees Merchat, an investor and AI leader, wrote that remote or distributed teams underperform only because their digital infrastructure is lacking, not because physical co-location is inherently superior, and said that the "real question is whether to fix the tooling or fix the seating chart."

"My experience running distributed teams is different. The face-to-face edge in problem solving is real, but it shrinks fast once the team adopts shared async tooling: structured written decisions, recorded design walkthroughs, and AI agents that codify tacit knowledge from senior people into searchable artifacts. Co-location wins when the tooling is weak," he wrote.