'We Tap Talent At Its Source': NDTV's 'Disruptor Of The Year' Sridhar Vembu

Sridhar Vembu, Co-Founder and Chief Scientist of Zoho Corporation, which is challenging Silicon Valley giants with its innovative products, has been named the 'Disruptor Of The Year' at NDTV's Indian Of The Year 2025.

Speaking at the event on Friday, Vembu said he decided to build in India because Silicon Valley also draws a large chunk of its talent from the country, and he wanted to tap this talent at the source.

The Chief Scientist of Zoho, whose products are being adopted by the Government of India, also spoke about navigating the next change in the technology arena, which will be driven by AI (Artificial Intelligence), and regaled the audience by singing a portion of a Tamil song. 

"Even Silicon Valley is mostly relying on our talent, so we decided to go where the talent is - at the root. Why wait for the talent to show up? We go to the source. I have to dedicate this award to my team. Just today, there was news that the SaaS (Software as a Service) industry will be dead because of AI. That's tech, right? If you miss this turn of AI, you will be dead," he said.

Striking an optimistic note, Vembu pointed out that such changes also present opportunities and companies can actually grow much bigger than they are if they can navigate such situations well.  

On India being behind the US and China in terms of developing large AI models, the Zoho co-founder said the country is building impactful, smaller models. 

"(China's) DeepSeek showed that you can do it a lot cheaper. So we are working on disrupting that way. I also believe that much more energy-efficient AI is going to come, which will be another form of disruption," he said.

On whether AI will disrupt the entertainment space, Vembu said the economy will, overall, be powered by humans. 

In a lighter moment, the Zoho Chief Scientist was asked whether there was any song he would like to sing for the audience, which had several prominent personalities, including Chief Justice of India Surya Kant. 

He sang two lines of a song picturised on MGR and Jayalalithaa which, he said, means, "We want to fly like the birds, we want to dance like the waves, and celebrate our freedom."