Sridhar Vembu, founder of Zoho Corp stepped down as the CEO of the software firm and assumed the role of ‘Chief Scientist’. He wrote on X, “A new chapter begins today. In view of the various challenges and opportunities facing us, including recent major developments in AI, it has been decided that it is best that I should focus full time on R&D initiatives, along with pursuing my personal rural development mission”.
“Our co-founder Shailesh Kumar Davey will serve as our new group CEO. Our co-founder Tony Thomas will lead Zoho US. Rajesh Ganesan will lead our ManageEngine division and Mani Vembu will lead the http://Zoho.com division. The future of our company entirely depends on how well we navigate the R&D challenge,” Vembu added.
Vembu has been vocal about the significance of research and development in shaping the future of Zoho. He has highlighted his interest in areas such as AI, distributed systems, and cloud technology, which he believes are critical for building next-generation solutions. Zoho has also been expanding and diversifying from software to semiconductors and now e-commerce.
By assuming the role of Chief Scientist, Vembu aims to dedicate more time and energy to exploring these transformative technologies and their practical applications. In an interview he said that the larger vision for the company is to focus on R&D.
“Our growth strategy is about bringing all this technology together. This is a lot of heavy capability R&D we have to build, and a lot of nifty system integration. Cliq Rooms is an example of the integration, the Smart TV, phone, and the cloud, are all that nicely integrated, you don’t realise they are integrated so well,” he said in October 2023. Bootstrapped Zoho managed to clock a revenue more than Rs 8,000 crores and profit of Rs 2,800 crores in FY23
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