Transforming the Indian village economy

Over the last quarter of the century, India has emerged as a leader in the software industry. In the year 2019-20, its software exports amounted to around $128.6 billion, according to RBI-released data. There are several IT majors in India, but most of these focus on software services or solutions. However, another section of the industry caters to innovations known as software products slowly gaining cognizance in India. 

Here is one such success story about a man who rose from humble beginnings to founding one of the country's most successful conglomerates with a net worth of $2.6 billion. 

Sridhar Vembu, CEO of Zoho, was born in the small South Indian township of Thanjavur. Born to a high court stenographer and a homemaker mother (neither of whom attended college), he completed his early education from a Tamil-medium government-aided school. As talent would have, he went on to complete his undergraduate studies from IIT Madras. 

More recently, he has been on a mission to conduct a novel experiment to tackle India's unemployment issue by transforming the country's remotest villages into global Technology centres. Following this, he earned his degree in Electrical Engineering from Princeton University in 1989.

Sridhar joined Qualcomm, San Diego, in 1994 after completing his PhD. As an Electrical Engineer, he worked on wireless communication for nearly two years, encompassing CDMA, power control, and highly complex communications issues.

During his time at Princeton, he developed a deep interest in Political Science and Economics, which led to him reading various books and researching the performance of markets such as Japan, Singapore, and Taiwan and how they had managed to expand so effectively. It was also the time he learned that several Indian engineers were working in critical positions at multi-billion-dollar corporations all across the globe. Yet, only a few Indian firms were prominent rivals in the software industry.

He believed that the problem lay in India's socialist economy and was determined to correct the situation. So, when his brother Kumar brought up the idea two years later, he decided to follow. He quit his work and returned home to try and repair the nation's problems with the help of technology. They collaborated with Tony Thomas, who had sufficient experience and expertise in network administration software. Finally, in 1996, he founded Vembu Software from a modest flat in Chennai's outskirts. Except for simple assistance from family and friends, the company received no outside funding.

Tony served as the company's CEO and Chairman at first, while Sridhar served as its Chief Campaigner. Sridhar was in charge of promoting and marketing the company's technologies. He also began approaching consumers in the Bay Area, where several networking firms originated. Soon after, they began getting clients - Cisco was one of the first. The software started selling successfully. Many firms in Silicon Valley would adopt it, as would Japan, a budding IT market. By 2000, the firm had grown to 115 engineers in India and seven individuals in the United States, bringing in a revenue of roughly $10 million.

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