What’s story of Zoho? Why creator of Arattai, Sridhar Vembu left US and settled in village in India?

Vembu shifted Zoho’s operations into rural India, specifically to a village in Tenkasi, Tamil Nadu, with the philosophy that world-class technology can be built outside big cities.

Published: September 30, 2025 2:01 PM IST

Keeping with the ‘swadeshi’ spirit, Union minister Ashwini Vaishnaw on Wednesday made a presentation on the decisions of the Union Cabinet using indigenously developed ‘Zoho Show’ software.

Vaishnaw made the announcement of using Zoho before briefing the media on the decisions taken by the Union Cabinet.

Ashwini Vaishnaw On Zoho

“Keeping with the spirit of swadeshi, the presentation I am about to make before you was prepared using Zoho. It was not made on Microsoft Powerpoint, but Zoho,” Vaishnaw said. The minister said he has started using Zoho software personally for the past couple of days.

“Switch to Swadeshi! Cabinet briefing using Zoho Show,” Vaishnaw posted on X.

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Exciting meeting with the Zoho team! They’re scaling up infrastructure to support Arattai’s growth.

Happy to see our swadeshi products thriving & contributing to PM @narendramodi Ji’s vision of Aatmanirbhar Bharat! pic.twitter.com/inr35TtWf3

— Ashwini Vaishnaw (@AshwiniVaishnaw) September 29, 2025

Who Is Sridhar Vembu?

Sridhar Vembu founded Zoho Corporation in Chennai. After completing his B.Tech at IIT Madras and getting a PhD from Princeton University, Vembu worked at Qualcomm in the US. He was leading a good career in America but chose to return to India. He left the country and his company job behind.

In 1996, he started a company called AdventNet, which was rebranded as Zoho Corporation in 2009. The “Zoho” name was adopted as early as 2002 for a new project. Under Vembu’s leadership, Zoho started several indigenous apps and tools in the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) industry  without any external funding by relying on internal profits and long-term planning.

Striking visual of the growth in product range of Zoho and ManageEngine from 2002 to today.

We are the only company in the world that can take on Microsoft in the breadth and depth of the product suite. Our products offer a vastly superior experience to Microsoft, please take a… pic.twitter.com/rzbd2bPrI2

— Sridhar Vembu (@svembu) September 25, 2025

Vembu established Zoho Schools to provide tech education for rural youth, many of whom now form Zoho’s core workforce.

Arattai has become the top-ranked social networking app on Indian app stores, providing features similar to WhatsApp but with a strong focus on user privacy. Sridhar Vembu, through posts on the X platform, shared a graphic charting Zoho’s journey and asserted that Zoho is the only Indian company capable of rivaling Microsoft, offering a superior experience with its business and office tools.

(With Inputs From PTI)