Sridhar Vembu

He has a PhD from Princeton.

He built a software company used by over 10 crore people around the world.

And he does it from a village in Tamil Nadu.

If you think a big company needs a big city and big investors, read the story of Sridhar Vembu.

He studied at IIT Madras, then went to Princeton for a PhD in electrical engineering, and in 1994 he joined Qualcomm in the US.

The American dream, fully unlocked.

He walked away from it.

In 1996 he started a small software company called AdventNet with his two siblings and three friends.

Then came the first wall.

He tried to raise money. Nobody gave it.

So he made a choice most founders never make.

He decided he did not need investors at all.

Zoho never raised outside money. Bootstrapped = a company built only from its own earnings, with no outside investors

That meant no investor telling him to grow faster or sell early, and every rupee he spent had to come from a paying customer first.

Slowly, it worked.

AdventNet became Zoho.

In 2021 its revenue crossed $1 billion.

By 2023 it had more than 10 crore users across 55+ business apps.

Netflix, L'Oreal and PayPal use its software.

In FY23 it made ₹8,703 crore in revenue and ₹2,836 crore in profit.

And then he did the strangest thing for a billionaire.

He moved to a village near Tenkasi in Tamil Nadu and ran the company from there.

He also built Zoho University, which trains students straight after class 12.

No college degree needed.

Now the hard truth.

Not every bet worked.

In September 2025, a union minister promoted Zoho's chat app Arattai.

Sign-ups jumped from 3,000 a day to 3.5 lakh a day.

It hit number 1 on the App Store.

Within a month it had fallen to 58th.

WhatsApp moved back ahead.

Arattai had just over 1 crore downloads on Google Play, against WhatsApp's 50 crore users in India.

Hype is not habit.

In January 2025 he also stepped down as CEO and became Zoho's chief scientist, so he could spend his time on research instead of running the company.

Today Forbes puts his wealth near $5.8 billion.

He got the Padma Shri in 2021.

He did not wait for money to come to him.

He built a company that never needed it.

Would you say no to investor money if it meant keeping full control?

✍🏻 Mantra Joshi

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