- Sridhar Vembu has been directed to deposit a $1.7 billion bond in his divorce case in California
- Vembu's net worth is $5.85 billion, making him one of India's 40 richest people
- His wife alleges asset transfers to family to reduce her legal entitlement in divorce
Zoho founder and CEO Sridhar Vembu is at the centre of one of the world's costliest divorces, with a California court ordering him to deposit a $1.7 billion bond (around Rs 15,000 crore) amid divorce proceedings with his wife Pramila Srinivasan. The case is the most expensive divorce involving an Indian businessman.
Vembu's net worth is estimated at $5.85 billion, placing him among India's 40 richest people, though most of Zoho's shares are held by his siblings. The company, privately held, employs 12,000 people and serves 80 million users globally.
Vembu married Pramila Srinivasan in 1993, and the couple has a son. After nearly 25 years in the US' San Francisco Bay Area running Zoho, he moved in 2020 to Tamil Nadu to oversee rural initiatives and run Zoho from India.
Pramila Srinivasan filed for divorce in 2020. She alleged that Vembu abandoned her and their son, who has special needs, and secretly transferred key Zoho assets, including intellectual property and shares, to relatives in India. She claimed this was designed to reduce her legal entitlement under California's community property laws.
“My husband of 29 years not only abandoned me and our son,” she said in a 2023 court filing, “he decided to make fictitious transfers or ‘sales' of our most valuable community asset to his family members without their paying any cash or other consideration, and without ever telling me or asking my permission.”
Vembu has denied wrongdoing, saying that he never reduced their shared financial interest and moved to India purely to pursue rural initiatives. He also claimed he asked Srinivasan and their son to join him in India, but the pandemic prevented that.
What Vembu's Lawyer Said
Court filings showed that Vembu's sister and brother own most of Zoho's shares, while Vembu holds only 5 per cent. Srinivasan's lawyers said that several asset transfers were hidden from her, including the $50 million sale of Zoho's intellectual property to an India-based company, ZPCL, with no clear record of payment. Vembu said the money from the sale is still held by the original US company, T&V Holdings.
Christopher C Melcher, Vembu's lawyer, has tagged all allegations against his client as "false."
"Sridhar owns 5 per cent of the shares of Zoho Corporation Private Limited (ZCPL). He offered last year to transfer 50 per cent of his shares to his wife, unconditionally. That proposal remains open, but she will not accept the stock. Instead, she claims Sridhar owns 88 per cent of the stock. Her allegation is completely false. Records back to 2011 show that Sridhar holds the same amount of shares today as he did then," the lawyer wrote in a long post on X.
Globally, the most expensive divorces include Bill and Melinda Gates ($73 billion), Jeff Bezos and MacKenzie Scott ($38 billion), and Alec and Jocelyn Wildenstein ($3.8 billion). Other cases involve Rupert Murdoch and Steve Wynn, each exceeding $1 billion.
