Silicon Valley Runs On Indian Talent, Says Sridhar Vembu, NDTV's 'Disruptor Of The Year'

Zoho Corp. Founder Sridhar Vembu, named as NDTV's 'Disruptor of The Year' on Friday, underlined the importance of Indian talent globally, including at the US tech hub of Silicon Valley.

"Even Silicon valley is mostly relying on our talent and I would like to dedicate all of this to my awesome team who keeps building," the tech tycoon said.

Vembu launched his professional career working for Qualcomm as a wireless engineer in San Diego, California, before moving to the San Francisco Bay Area. He has lived in San Jose and Pleasanton.

In 1996, Vembu, along with two of his brothers, founded a software development house for network equipment providers called AdventNet.

The company was renamed Zoho Corporation in 2009, focusing on providing SaaS support to Customer relationship management services. Vembu moved to Tenkasi, India in 2019. As of 2020, he held an 88% stake in the company.

When asked about India on the landscape of AI's multi-billion dollar investmnets, Vembu put the focus back on catching oppertunities at the grass root level.

"The trillion dollar investments on AI, India is not there on the map. But for smaller business models that are being integrated, but we are there. There are many oppertunities of disruption," he said. He went on to add that as advertisments, visuals and content across industries have become AI focused, Zoho is also immersing itself into the space.

"The biggest disruption is in how we write in code. We are also working on advertisments, and we'll see how people like it. People will run the economy and AI will be part of it," he said.

He was awarded India's fourth highest civilian award, the Padma Shri, in 2021. And as per Forbes list of India’s 100 richest tycoons, 2024, Sridhar Vembu and his siblings are ranked 51st with a net worth of $5.8 billion.

Vembu was born in a village in Thanjavur district, Tamil Nadu. He graduated with a bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras in 1989, and earned his MS and PhD in Electrical Engineering degrees from Princeton University in New Jersey.