Meet Sridhar Vembu: Man Who Challenged Tradition; Turned Villages Into Thriving Software Hubs (Photo on X@Zoholics)
A radical idea, certainly different from what the business school would teach ambitious entrepreneurs, struck Sridhar Vembu, a PhD graduate in electrical engineering from Princeton, US. Kickstarting his entrepreneurial journey in 1996, Sridhar ventured into creating a software product powerhouse out of India, sensing an opportunity in rural areas, instead of going after the Silicon Valley to realise his dream.
While the tech companies rushed to hire graduates from Stanford and other prestigious institutions, Sridhar was driven to rural Tamil Nadu, past the city, tech parks and high-end infrastructure. He looked into the villages where young people had not even seen a computer. The tech brain saw something others missed in the village.
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Sidhar hired villagers with no resume, seeing their hunger, grit, and determining to use their raw intelligence. With a distinct strategy, he gave them the opportunity, which was the sole thing they lacked.
Challenging the conventional system, Sridhar launched Zoho University, now known as Zoho Schools of Learning, in 2005, making it an alternative to traditional college education, for students after their plus two He then provided training programs and internships at his own company. Enrolled students with no degree requirements, or codding experience, aptitude tests and a willingness to learn were the only major criteria in his institute.
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The company thus hired young talented individuals after they completed their Class 12 studies from low-income households and trained them to build software products.
The simple program gave birth to engineers who started working at Zoho. The company paid them stipends for 2 years of intensive training in coding, math, and communication, and then made them capable of going straight into building products. Hence, the youngsters were saved from the brunt of education loans and other professional requirements.
Zoho opened offices in tiny rural towns, by converting old buildings into tech hubs, instead of forcing talent to migrate to cities. Today, Zoho serves millions of users globally, and all coded by engineers who never left their hometowns, with a considerable share of Zoho’s workforce now being from rural areas.
As per the claim by the company, it has gained over 50 million users globally over the past two decades, and currently generates over $1 billion annually, reflecting Sridhar’s ideas and brilliant billion-dollar success.
Without depending on Silicon Valley’s inflated ecosystem, Sridhar built his own empire not just by finding cheaper labor but by generating employment in the rural areas, thus helping thousands of families.
The company rapidly transformed to become a serious challenger to established global technology giants. Sridhar renamed the company as Zoho Corporation in 2009.
