Sridhar Vembu, founder and CEO of software development firm Zoho Corporation has been awarded India's fourth-highest civilian honour, the Padma Shri, by the Indian Union government on Monday. According to Forbes, he is the 59th richest Indian in the world with a net worth of USD 2.5 billion as of 2020.
Vembu, along with his two brothers founded a software development house for network equipment providers in 1996 called AdventNet, which was renamed Zoho Corporation in 2009, focusing on providing Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) support to customer relationship management services.
In 1989, Vembu graduated out of IIT Madras, did a PhD from Princeton University and then got a job as a wireless systems engineer at Qualcomm for two years. In 1996, along with two of his brothers and three friends, he co-founded AdventNet.
Today, Zoho has 60 million users worldwide and counts Levi's, Amazon, Philips, Whirlpool, Ola, Xiaomi, and Zomato among its clientele, according to Friday Magazine, an online publication.
As of 2020, he held an 88 percent stake in the company. His company has also unveiled an instant messaging app called 'Arattai', that is made in India. The app is expected to be formally launched in a few weeks.
Vembu recently moved back to India—specifically to Tenkasi, a remote village in Tamil Nadu.
"No, the pandemic wasn't the catalyst," Vembu told the Friday Magazine. "I'd been thinking about making this move to a village for a while now."
Padma Awards are conferred in three categories, namely — Padma Vibhushan, Padma Bhushan, and Padma Shri — and are given in various disciplines/fields of activities, including art, social work, public affairs, science and engineering, trade and industry, medicine, literature and education, sports, civil service, etc.
The Union Home Ministry said the President has approved the conferment of 119 Padma awards -- seven Padma Vibhushan, 10 Padma Bhushan and 102 Padma Shri.
Other prominent awardees from the field of trade and industry who have been conferred the Padma Awards this year include UPL Chairman Rajnikant Devidas Shroff, Rajni Bector, Jaswantiben Jamnadas Popat and P Subramanian.
