Zoho founder and CEO Sridhar Vembu on being honoured with the Padma Shri, launching a new instant messaging app and his experience of starting a school in a village in Tamil Nadu
Sridhar Vembu, founder and CEO, Zoho Corp
Days after being conferred with the Padma Shri, founder and chief executive of software development firm Zoho Corp Sridhar Vembu speaks to Forbes India about their new instant messaging app Arattai, privacy concerns over WhatsApp and a new school initiative in the village in Tenkasi district (Tamil Nadu). Edited excerpts:
Q. What was your initial reaction when you got to know that you are being honoured with the Padma Shri?
It was a complicated feeling because I'm a little shy about receiving awards like this. To be honest, I have been amply rewarded. The reason why I'm giving back to India is because India has given me so much. But I do accept the award, in humility. There are social workers and others who deserve this type of recognition, because they are selfless servers who have actually given up a lot to serve the country. I'm a business person and that's why I want to give back to India.
Q. What is your take on WhatsApp’s recent privacy policy?
We launched Arattai, an instant messaging app. This app was in progress from a long time and it is still in trial phase; we’re not launching it because of WhatsApp’s privacy policy concerns. But in India, we need to develop the technological know-how, expertise which includes instant messaging, and a variety of technology, not just in software. We invest in medical instruments and in semiconductor chips… all of that needs to be done. Given our population base, the size of our market, we have to do a lot of these. So with this spirit, we launched it. We actually believe that Facebook cannot really keep its promises. Their business model always requires them to break a user's privacy. So I think it is better for most people to migrate away from Facebook, WhatsApp and applications like these. That's what I sincerely believe.
Q. Tell us more about Arattai. How will it be different from other messaging apps?
First is the strong emphasis on privacy—that is what Arattai is. Our business model never relies on advertising and that's why we can actually make the commitment. Because something like instant messaging carries your most personal conversations, pretty much all life now happens over instant messaging, and all business too. Arattai came from our technology roots, Zoho Cliq—it's a platform like Slack for internal communications within the company and the same technology is used in Arattai. We are going to have a very strong product because we have the expertise to do this. This app will be formally launched in a couple of months.
Q. What are your expectations from Budget 2021?
I don't actually have a very serious opinion about the Budget because I look at India's challenge primarily as a private sector one, investing in deep technological know-how. We can build factories, projects, but we need the expertise and capital equipment. For example, take textile factories: All the machines are imported. We need the machines, we need to know how to build those machines, because we have the mechanical, electrical, and software engineers, all of the talent we produce. We need to be able to make these machines and that is the challenge India faces. Tweaking the Budget here and there is not the primary reason those are not made. The primary reason is our private sector has to step up and invest. So I am focussed on that problem. That’s the reason I don't have a lot of opinion on the budget, and what the taxes are. India's already reasonably good in terms of our policies. One will always debate if this particular policy is better than the other. But overall, I would say, India is actually a good place to do business today.