Zoho is privately owned and 88% of the company is owned by Vembu and members of his family.
SaaS giant Zoho Corporation co-founder and CEO Sridhar Vembu was awarded the Padma Shri under the Trade and Industry category. Vembu was born in Tamil Nadu’s Thanjavur district, and went on to study at the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras and Princeton University. After this, he worked at Qualcomm before founding AdventNet in 1996.
AdventNet was renamed to Zoho in 2009, but was founded at the time to build software products. Zoho continues to be privately owned, and 88% of the company is owned by Vembu and members of his family. Zoho is reported to have over 50 million users worldwide and Zoho One is its flagship product.
Valued by Forbes in 2020 at nearly $2.5 billion, Vembu moved to Mathalamparai, a village in Tenkasi in Tamil Nadu in late 2019. From Tamil Nadu, the company is working on an experiment where engineers from 10 villages — 200 engineers — work closer to the homes while working for the company from feeder offices.
On the Padma Shree award, it is a huge honor and I feel humbled. I dedicate this to our employees, my extended family, for keeping the faith.
I want to thank friends and well-wishers for all your messages that have poured in. Your support keeps me going.
— Sridhar Vembu (@svembu) January 26, 2021
Zoho’s products include customer relationship management (CRM) solutions, online accounting, project management, social media management and more. According to Forbes, a few of the company’s products, such as Zoho Desk, were built in the Mathalamparai office.
In addition to training engineers, Vembu has also been teaching children in his village and went from educating children in his spare time to having four teachers and 52 students, according to Indian Express. He is now looking at a rural school startup where education and food is free, and a model which doesn’t have systems such as marks or degrees.
Vembu’s push to run Zoho out of rural India has led to offices being set up in rural India — currently one in Tenkasi and one in Renigunta, Andhra Pradesh. The Union Home Ministry on Monday conferred 119 Padma awards — seven Padma Vibhushan, 10 Padma Bhushan and 102 Padma Shri.
Source: The News Minute