Sridhar Vembu obtained his B.Tech. in Electrical Engineering in 1989. In 1996, he co-founded AdventNet, which later evolved to become Zoho Corp, based in Chennai. Today, Zoho is emerging as the business operating system in the cloud, offering a comprehensive suite of online software applications for business. With over 2500 employees, Zoho is the largest software product company from India, while remaining private and profitable.

Sridhar believes passionately in providing alternative paths to conventional college education, borrowing ideas from India’s ancient gurukul system as well as the contemporary German apprenticeship system, which powers one of the leading economies in the world. One interesting feature of Zoho is that about 300 of our employees do not have a college degree, recruited directly from schools and polytechnics and trained in the in-house Zoho University program. This year, Zoho University has recruited about 90 students.