Sridhar Vembu is stepping down after a long tenure as chief executive officer at the Chennai-based cloud services company Zoho to take on the role of Chief Scientist. He would now lead the company’s deep R&D initiatives, especially AI.
"I will step down as CEO of Zoho Corp and take a new role as Chief Scientist, responsible for deep R&D initiatives," Vembu wrote on the X platform on January 27.
Vembu announces new CEO for Zoho
He named Zoho's co-founder Shailesh Kumar Davey as the new CEO.
"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 Zoho.com division," he added.
Vembu’s announcement marks a new chapter for the $1 billion software giant.
The bootstrapped firm Zoho managed to clock a revenue of more than Rs 8,000 crores and a profit of Rs 2,800 crores in FY23.
After completing his Bachelor’s in Electrical Engineering from IIT Madras in 1989, the Zoho founder did his MS and PhD in Electrical Engineering from Princeton University. He started his career as an engineer at Qualcomm in San Diego, US, before founding Zoho in 2005.
Vembu built Zoho into a large software-as-a-service (SaaS) company with cloud suite tools for productivity, collaboration, sales, marketing, and back-office accounting. Zoho competes with tech giants Microsoft, Google, Salesforce, and Oracle in the business software market. The bootstrapped company has over 100 million users across its 55+ business applications and serves 700,000 customers in more than 150 countries.
“A new chapter begins today,” Vembu remarked. “In view of the various challenges and opportunities facing us, including recent major developments in AI, it has been decided that it is best for me to focus full-time on R&D initiatives, along with pursuing my personal rural development mission,” he added.
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