📄 Article
✓ Link checked
India
Free
Intermediate
Vembu built a global software company from Tenkasi with no outside funding, and this interview is him explaining the structural choices behind it: rural R&D hubs, domain specific rather than frontier AI models, no layoffs. It is the strongest existing proof that where you sell from matters less than what your cost structure lets you outlast.
Zoho's Unconventional Path: Building a Global Tech Giant from India's Heartland
From Dataquest India by Aanchal Ghatak 12 min read
- Zoho bets on domain-specific models, which often outperform the larger foundational ones.
- Customer data is never co-mingled to train models; each model is tailored to one customer.
- The company pledged to avoid layoffs and redeploy people to emerging areas instead.
- It has an application pending under India's PLI scheme to build a semiconductor fab.
