Dr. Sridhar Vembu, the founder, Chief Scientist and Ex-CEO of Zoho Corporation, born in 1968, hails from a middle-class Tamil family in a village in the Thanjavur district of Tamil Nadu, India. His upbringing in this modest environment played a significant role in shaping his character and instilling core values. In 1989, he completed his bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, and earned both his MS and PhD degrees at Princeton University, USA.
Dr. Sridhar joined Qualcomm in San Diego in 1994, where he worked on power control algorithms in wireless communications and CDMA. During his IIT and Princeton days, he read extensively about the economic growth of Asian nations such as Japan, Singapore, and Taiwan. This shaped his belief in the importance of anchor industries, leading eventually to the formation of Zoho Corporation. Founded modestly in 1996 as a home-based venture with his siblings and friends, it has grown to over 17,500 employees as of early 2026.
Sridhar focused on promoting and marketing the technology the company was developing to companies in Silicon Valley and Japan, particularly network equipment vendors. In 2000, he took over as CEO just as the dot-com bubble was about to burst, and the company suffered a significant drop in business in 2001-02. This led the company to broaden its market from network equipment vendors to enterprise IT departments, and eventually to Zoho.com, targeting every knowledge worker.
Dr. Sridhar has built scalable global products from India that compete with Microsoft, Salesforce, and Google, without external funding, by channelling the company's internal resources in the right direction at the right time. His desire to make rural India self-reliant led him to establish Zoho offices in rural villages, including Mathalamparai in Tenkasi, Tamil Nadu, and Renigunta in Andhra Pradesh. He set up Zoho Schools of Learning to provide vocational software education to rural students as an alternative to formal university education. In 2020, he started a rural school initiative focused on free primary and secondary education.
Dr. Sridhar Vembu was awarded India's fourth highest civilian award, the Padma Shri, in 2021, and was appointed to the National Security Advisory Board the same year. He also received the 2019 Ernst & Young "Entrepreneur of the Year Award" in India and was named CNN-News18 Indian of the Year 2022. In 2023, Zoho surpassed 100 million global users, a feat achieved without external funding, reflecting his commitment to sustainable, privacy-first innovation. In 2024, he led Zoho's strategic expansion into Australia, setting up a regional hub in Adelaide and generating new employment opportunities while strengthening the company's global presence. In a significant leadership transition in early 2025, he stepped down as CEO to assume the role of Chief Scientist, signalling a renewed focus on advanced research and AI-driven innovation. These milestones reflect his vision of building globally competitive, indigenous technology rooted in long-term values and local empowerment.