TENKASI: Sridhar Vembu (54), founder and CEO of Zoho, dedicated the Padma Shri award conferred on him to his employees and his extended family.
In his tweet, Vembu, who resides at Mathalamparai village near Tenkasi, said, “It is a huge honour, and I feel humbled. I dedicate this to our employees, my extended family, for keeping the faith. I want to thank the friends and well-wishers for all your messages that have poured in. Your support keeps me going (sic).”
Vembu graduated from IIT-Madras and completed his PhD in electrical engineering from Princeton University. The billionaire, who hails from an agriculturist family in Thanjavur, co-founded AdventNet in 1996. He later founded Zoho Corp, which has branches in several countries.
In 2019, Vembu moved to Mathalamparai village, where he runs the Zoho school and a unit of his company to create skilled students. “Our investment in people is a vital part of our R&D edge. We have a comprehensive programme to hire and train high school students.
We call this programme Zoho Schools of Learning. Over 15 per cent of our engineers come from this programme. Not only is the programme good for our company, it is also good for the communities we live in,” says the Zoho website.