Sridhar Vembu, the founder and former chief executive officer of Zoho Corp., advises young entrepreneurs to marry and have children early in life, as “a demographic duty to society”.
Zoho Corp founder and former CEO Sridhar Vembu. (Image via Twitter)
“I advise young entrepreneurs I meet, both men and women, to marry and have kids in their 20s and not keep postponing it,” Vembu wrote on X. “I tell them they have to do their demographic duty to society and their own ancestors. I know these notions may sound quaint or old-fashioned but I am sure these ideas will resonate again.”
Vembu, who returned to India in 2019-20 after spending nearly two decades in the US, was reposting Upasana Konidela—founder of wellness platform URLife—who during her recent visit to IIT Hyderabad found that male students are more willing to get married than women. “The women seemed far more career-focused!!!! This is the new – Progressive India,” she said in a post.
Sridhar Vembu wife & family
To be sure, Sridhar Vembu is divorced—his three-decade marriage with Pramila Srinivasan, founder and president of the US-based The Brain Foundation, came to end in 2023. They have an autistic son who now lives with his mother.
That separation wasn’t without controversy.
According to a Forbes report dated 13 March 2023, Srinivasan claims Vembu abandoned her and their son in the US to return to Tamil Nadu. In the divorce case in California, where they resided together for years, she claims Vembu deliberately got rid of a big chunk of his Zoho stake in a complex transaction that moved Zoho’s IP to India and eventually placed the majority of the shares with his sister and her husband, without ever telling her.
“Sridhar holds himself out as a world-class entrepreneur, ‘thought leader’, and moral compass. He seeks to serve as an inspiration to young people wishing to follow in his footsteps and build successful businesses,” Srinivasan states in the divorce filing.
“Just recently, Sridhar tweeted, ‘We need men to grow up to be providers and shoulder responsibility for families’. He did not disclose in this tweet that he left his special-needs son three years ago, and has not seen him since, and that he is seeking to deprive our community of its real assets.”
On 14 March 2023, Vembu responded to the Forbes report in a series of tweets.
“It is complete fiction to say I financially abandoned Pramila and my son. They enjoy a far richer life than I do and I have supported them fully,” he had posted then. “I have endured vicious personal attacks before and I will endure this one too. I will continue to build institutions and capabilities in rural India, my only remaining purpose in life. My prayer is that someday my beloved son will join me here.”