Who is Sridhar Vembu? The man behind Zoho and India’s viral messaging app Arattai
Sridhar Vembu, founder of Zoho, built the viral Indian messaging app Arattai from rural Tamil Nadu. A Princeton PhD and former Qualcomm engineer, he champions local talent, bootstrapped global tech, and privacy-focused digital solutions.
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As Arattai, a homegrown messaging app from Zoho Corporation, surges in popularity with sign-ups spiking 100x over three days, attention is turning to the visionary behind it, Sridhar Vembu, Zoho’s founder.
Vembu is no ordinary tech entrepreneur. Born in 1968 in Thanjavur, Tamil Nadu, he earned a B.Tech in Electrical Engineering from IIT Madras and a PhD from Princeton University.
After working at Qualcomm in Silicon Valley, Vembu made the unconventional choice to return to rural Tenkasi, Tamil Nadu, rejecting the allure of India’s tech metros. His philosophy is clear, world-class technology can be built in villages by overlooked talent.
In 1996, Vembu co-founded AdventNet, which evolved into Zoho Corporation, a global SaaS powerhouse with over 100 million users in more than 180 countries.
Notably, Zoho has remained bootstrapped, rejecting external funding to retain independence and focus on long-term impact. He also founded Zoho Schools of Learning, a training program for young talent from modest backgrounds, feeding the company’s workforce with skilled developers outside elite institutions.
Launched in 2021, Arattai, meaning casual chat in Tamil, embodies Vembu’s vision of Indian alternatives to global tech giants. The app offers group chats, voice/video calls, stories, and broadcast channels, while emphasizing privacy and spyware-proof communication.
Following an endorsement by Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan and social media buzz, daily sign-ups soared from 3,000 to 3,50,000, forcing Zoho to rapidly expand its infrastructure.
Vembu wrote on X, “We have faced a 100x increase in Arattai traffic in 3 days… we are adding infrastructure on an emergency basis for another potential 100x peak surge. That is how exponentials work.”
