“I’m like a remote CEO,” declares Sridhar Vembu, as he fixes his gaze on the rice paddy that looks like a green sea.
Sridhar and his brothers founded Zoho in 1996, in Silicon Valley, California, the global hub of technology and innovation in the United States.
Today, 25 years later, the cloud-based software company has more than 9. 500 employees and the magazine Forbes calculates a value of almost US $ 2. 500 millions.
But after spending nearly three decades in California and bringing the company to where it is, Sridhar decided to move to a quieter place, a lot Simo más: a remote village in southern India.
No main roads or sewers
“It has many rice fields with about four or five streets,” Sridhar tells the BBC.
The leafy village is situated at the foot of a mountain range in the Tenkasi district, 600 km south of Chennai, on the coast Eastern India.
Has less than 2. 000 inhabitants, there are no main roads, no aqueduct or sewerage. Access to electricity is also erratic, so Sridhar relies on generators of di é sel .
It is very different from Silicon Valley, so how do you Do you manage to work from here?
On the one hand, you have gotten a high-speed fiber optic internet connection.
And, on the other, Being the head of an immensely successful company has its benefits: “Basically, things that have to do with important policies come to me.”
“The company is big enough now and a lot of the decisions are made locally within a team. ”
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Adaptation to rural life
None of his top executives or his personal assistants live nearby. However, this digital entrepreneur likes to be a leader who gets personally involved.
“I lead one of the teams. I work closely with programmers and get involved in some technology projects. The software team is made up of engineers from all over the world. ”
Sridhar lives in a recently built two-bedroom farmhouse and has enthusiastically adapted to the rural lifestyle.
The house is not air-conditioned Instead of driving a car, he now uses an electric motorcar or a bicycle, and goes to a village tea room frequently, to chat with the locals.
“I am enjoying it immensely of life here. I have been able to meet many people from this village and the surrounding areas. ”
He is usually seen in jeans and a T-shirt, although sometimes chooses to wear a dhoti , a typical male garment consisting of a rectangle of fabric that wraps around the legs and is fixed at the waist, looking like a pair of baggy pants.
Known, but not famous
Thanks to his appearances in the media, most of the locals know who he is. But he insists that he is not a celebrity.
In fact, he asked us not to publish the name of his village, since he does not want people to arrive without prior notice.
“Social life in the countryside is totally different. People have time to make good friends. Someone may unexpectedly invite you to their home for lunch. I recently went to a nearby village and kept some 10 or 15 conversations. ”
Sridhar assures that was never the ostentatious type of businessman of the jet-set , so he doesn’t miss his old life .
“I never played golf. I was never a social animal . I used to travel for business, but now most of those meetings are done by videoconference. ”
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Pre-pandemic satellite offices
With the pandemic, many have been forced to work remotely.
Now, with the relaxation of restrictions in some countries, some companies are considering the flexible modality.
Sridhar had already anticipated this, relocating workers and himself before the pandemic. As a consequence, today they have a sustainable model, he says.
His company, Zoho, established its first rural office ago 10 years in Tankasi, in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. Since then, it has opened until 30 satellite offices in various regions of India.
“We have understood that the labor model is going to change, so we are investing in creating rural offices and in (provide) tools online “.
Sridhar expects only between 20% Y 30% from your personal choose work permanently from home , so satellite offices could satisfy the need for social interaction, as well as eliminate the Need to go to Chennai where most of the employees are based in the country.
“Wherever there is a group of employees we will try to establish an office. People will be able to work from home for one or two days and come to the office the rest of the days, ”he explains.
Sridhar indicates that these satellite offices would ideally accommodate some 100 people.
Why move?
Sridhar was born in India and fondly remembered the school holidays in the village where his family was originally.
Although he moved to the United States to study and then stayed to work, he kept the desire to return some day to a village in India.
When they finally you were abandoned by the Bay Area in San Francisco, California, the decision did not cause much surprise among his colleagues.
“In some ways, Sridhar has always worked remotely. When you lived in California all these years, more than 90% of our employees worked from Chennai, ”says Praval Singh, Vice President of Marketing and Consumer Experience at Zoho.
“ Because we always had our teams geographically dispersed, where the CEO was not really affecting our work ”, he adds.
From his village, Sridhar interacts regularly with his employees in the US, Brazil and Singapore, as well as multiple locations in India.
Against traditional education
Sridhar attended top Indian and American academic institutions, but ah Now he has become very skeptical of the education system.
He graduated as an engineer from the Indian Institute of Technology in Madras, better known as ITT, and then received a master’s degree and a Ph.D. from Princeton University, USA
However, he insists that his academic education has nothing to do with his success .
“I was preparing myself to be an expert in the field of advanced mathematics and all I do now is basic arithmetic,” he says making a parallelism.
The businessman says that it makes no sense to “impose theories without context” on the students before making them understand how they can use them in their daily lives.
“I am a graduate in electrical engineering. I have studied Maxwell’s equations, but I don’t remember any of that. ”
“ Maxwell’s equations are important. But I’d say they become important only after you learn how electric motors work, winding them up and destroying them. ”
Zoho Schools
Because he is passionate about how education is transmitted, Sridhar created the “Zoho schools” which have eliminated traditional teaching and learning methods.
Two of those schools they work and n Tamil Nadu and he regularly visits the remaining one in the Tenkasi district.
These centers offer intensive two-year programs in subjects such as software technology , administration, design, creative writing and more. They accept students between 17 Y 20 years that have completed at least 12 years of basic education.
Students are fed and gives them US $ 140 per month as allowance .
“We teach you programming. You code real applications, ”says Sridhar. “You learn by doing.”
“You can be a great plumber without understanding fluid dynamics. You can be a great programmer without understanding the deep principles of computer science. It’s important to keep that in mind. ”
Some 900 students who were trained in the Zoho schools are now employees of Sridhar’s company.
Only a few billionaires, like Bill Gates and Warren Buffet, have set aside large sums of their wealth for philanthropic purposes. But Sridhar points out that he is not interested in emulating the Western model. He argues that social responsibility is integral to his business .
“We tend to do many things without calling them charity work. When we invest in job training, we are really helping the company and also helping the person being trained. ”
But it doesn’t end there.
Announced plans to install a hospital for beds in South India to serve the needs of rural and semi-urban patients.
In January, Sridhar received one of the highest civil honors in India.
In addition, he was appointed to the National Security Advisory Board, and his role is to find ways for India to acquire scientific knowledge in a variety of sectors critical to the country’s economy and security.
Will you stay definitely in the village?
Sridhar says he hopes to visit his US office when the pandemic ends, but that it will be a short trip.
He assures that has no plans to return permanently and that he is not attracted by the glamor or money of Silicon Valley.
“I run a company. The company is healthy. But that does not mean lead that lifestyle. I am not interested”.
“I would not miss that kind of life,” he reveals.
“We often think that money cures everything. It is not like this. You need social membership. ”
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