Meet man, who left job in US, created India’s viral messaging app, has net worth of Rs 500000000000, still lives in village, he is..

He has opted to live in rural Tamil Nadu, including locations like Tenkasi and Thanjavur, as opposed to living in a city with all the shining lights.

Published: October 12, 2025 9:44 AM IST

Zoho’s email service and messaging app called Arattai has been generating buzz lately. Recently, Union Home Minister Amit Shah created his official email account on it. Zoho Mail is a secure and ad-free email hosting service developed by Zoho Corporation, an Indian multinational technology company headquartered in Chennai, Tamil Nadu.

Launched in 2008, Zoho Mail is part of the larger Zoho Workplace suite, which includes tools for office productivity, collaboration, and communication. Known for its strong privacy standards and data protection policies, Zoho Mail provides encrypted email transmission, two-factor authentication, and servers primarily hosted in India and the United States.

The primary strength of Zoho is its comprehensive platform, Zoho One, which has over 50 applications: Zoho Mail for email, Zoho WorkDrive for storage, Zoho Writer for documents, Zoho Show for presentations, Zoho Meeting for video meetings, and, lastly, Zoho Arattai as an alternative to WhatsApp.

Have you ever wondered who its founder is? Sridhar Vembu, the founder of Zoho, is the titan of Indian technology attempting to rival the world’s largest technology companies. Despite Vembu’s incredible wealth of approximately Rs 50,000 crore, he lives an incredibly simple lifestyle; he doesn’t drive a high-end car or truck. He can often be seen riding his bicycle down village paths.

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Sridhar Vembu, who established the Zoho empire without external funding, earned a B.Tech degree from IIT Madras in 1989. Upon graduation, he became a System Design Engineer at Qualcomm. He didn’t enjoy the work and so decided to become an entrepreneur. In the 1990s, Vembu founded AdventNet, which eventually became Zoho Corporation.

As of today, Zoho, one of India’s biggest software companies, has millions of customers. The company’s valuation for 2023-24 was Rs 1.04 lakh crore. In Forbes 2024, Sridhar Vembu ranked 39th. He has opted to live in rural Tamil Nadu, including locations like Tenkasi and Thanjavur, as opposed to living in a city with all the shining lights.

After finishing his PhD in the USA, Vembu was employed as an IT engineer in a well-known company. However, his quick decision to move back to India shocked even his family. His goal with the idea of setting up an office in a village was to attract skilled young people from rural areas. The scope of Zoho’s success can be seen in the use of its products in 180 countries around the world.

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