Sridhar Vembu

Sridhar Vembu (born 1968) is an Indian billionaire business magnate and the founder and CEO of Zoho Corporation. According to Forbes, he is the 55th richest person in India with a net worth of $3.75 billion, as of 2021. He was awarded India's fourth highest civilian award, the Padma Shri, in 2021.

Vembu was born in 1968 in a middle class Tamil family from 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 degrees from Princeton Universityy in New Jersey.

Sridhar Vembu is noted for taking software and product development functions from urban centers into rural villages in India. Specifically, his company, Zoho, established its offices in rural Mathalamparai, Tenkasi district, Tamil Nadu and in suburban Renigunta, Andhra Pradesh. He moved from the Bay Area to Mathalamparai at this time.

In 2004, he set up Zoho Schools to provide vocational software development education to rural students as an alternative to formal university education. A statement from the company states that 15 to 20 percent of its engineers have no college degree, but have received vocational education from Zoho Schools. In 2020, he announced a "rural school startup" focused on free primary education.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sridhar_Vembu