Zoho founder Sridhar Vembu shared his insights on the dramatic transformation of India's entrepreneurial landscape, noting that starting a company in the country is significantly easier today compared to the past. Vembu, who graduated from IIT Madras in 1989, recalled a period of profound dejection regarding India's future.
From Dejection to Opportunity
Vembu described the late 1980s as a challenging time for India, marked by widespread unrest in regions like Punjab, Kashmir, and Assam. He noted that most IIT graduates during that era sought opportunities abroad, and his own focus had shifted from engineering to economics and philosophy, driven by a central question: "Why are we so poor?"
His reflections, shared on X, painted a picture of a nation he once felt hopeless about. "In 1989, when I graduated from IIT Madras, I remember feeling extremely dejected about our country. Punjab, Kashmir, and Assam were all burning," he wrote. This sentiment led him and some classmates to articulate concerns about India's stagnation in an IIT campus newspaper around 1988–89.
Economic Shift and Talent Pool
By 1989, Vembu had become a "committed anti-socialist," shaped by years of perceived stagnation. He cited global events like the collapse of the Soviet Union and unrest in China, alongside India's domestic economic stress, which culminated in the need for an emergency IMF loan in 1991. The economic reforms initiated by Shri Manmohan Singh in 1991 were a direct result of this pressure.
Vembu left India in 1989, feeling "miserable to leave but hopeless to stay." During his PhD years in the early 1990s, he continued to study poverty, examining the economic models of countries like Singapore and Japan before joining Qualcomm in 1994.
"We have been poor because we waste our talent on a truly massive scale. Zoho is built by very ordinary Indians from very humble backgrounds. That kind of talent pool is there everywhere in India."
When asked about his eventual answer to India's poverty, Vembu pointed to the nation's vast, untapped talent. He highlighted Zoho's success, built by "very ordinary Indians from very humble backgrounds," as evidence of this potential. "We have to tap it to create tens of thousands of companies like this. At that point, we will be shockingly wealthy as a nation," he asserted.
Today, Vembu emphasizes the ease of starting companies in India, attributing it to wider access to talent and significantly lower operational costs. This transformation, he suggests, allows individuals with talent to thrive in India in ways that were far more challenging during the "socialist raj days."