Sridhar Vembu's Defiant Simplicity In A Divided State

On some mornings, Sridhar Vembu rides his bicycle past paddy fields glistening in the soft light. The air in Tenkasi carries the calm of distance, from Chennai’s din and Silicon Valley’s sheen. Amid this quietude, it is easy to forget the storms that follow him in headlines and feeds. 

Vembu, founder of Zoho Corporation and architect of the indigenous messaging app Arattai, has been the target of ideological sniping, not for any technical failure, but for the sin of being a Tamil Brahmin who refuses to fit into the slots designed by the Dravidian ecosystem.

Zoho has quietly built a full-fledged enterprise stack, from email to CRM, from office productivity tools to data analytics, all coded and managed in India. But it is the company’s Arattai app that is in the line of fire. 

Arattai, which means 'chat' in Tamil, has seen a meteoric rise in downloads, buoyed by endorsements from Union Ministers and industrialists like Anand Mahindra. The app, pitched as a spyware-free alternative to WhatsApp, has become a symbol of India’s Aatmanirbhar tech ambitions. But in Tamil Nadu, where identity politics often trumps innovation, Vembu’s success has triggered a fresh round of vilification.

The Arattai story

Arattai’s journey has been anything but smooth. When it first launched, the name itself drew flak from Hindi-speaking users who found it 'unpronounceable.' Ironically, the same Dravidian voices who now disparage the app had then rallied behind it as a Tamil assertion against linguistic homogenization.

But tables turned when the Central government began promoting Zoho’s suite, including Arattai, as viable alternatives to American tech monopolies. Suddenly, the app was no longer a Tamil triumph, it was a 'Sanghi tool,' a 'government trap,' and Vembu was cast as a Brahmin agent of the BJP.

As can be seen, the criticism has little to do with the app's actual performance. Yes, Arattai has technical wrinkles. OTP delays, call glitches, and the absence of end-to-end encryption for chats are real concerns. But these are teething issues, not indictments. Vembu himself acknowledged them and committed to rapid fixes, even tweeting from his Tenkasi office where engineers were working on refinements.

But it’s easier, perhaps, to attack a man than examine his corporate ideas and ideals.

A different kind of revolution

Zoho's story and success, though, deserves good examination, as it always defied India’s tech orthodoxy. Founded in 1996, it grew without external funding, prioritising long-term product depth over quick exits. What truly sets Vembu apart is his insistence that technology shouldn’t orbit cities alone.

Over the last decade, he has shifted much of Zoho’s operations to smaller towns like Tenkasi, creating training centres where rural youth, many without engineering degrees, are mentored into software professionals. "We hire for attitude and aptitude," he often says, "not for a degree."

To put it bluntly, Vembu’s 'crime' is less about what he does and more about who he is. A Brahmin, a believer, a man who quotes the Gita and Gandhi in the same breath. In spirit and structure, he is more egalitarian than many who claim that word.

What he unsettles is not equality but control, control over the narrative, over Tamil identity, over who gets to represent Tamil pride.

The Tamil who stayed Tamil

There’s something quietly subversive about Vembu’s choice to return. Most of his IIT Madras or Princeton contemporaries stayed abroad, finding comfort in Silicon Valley. He came back, and based Zoho’s expansion not in Bengaluru or Gurgaon but in Tenkasi, a small town ringed by the Western Ghats.

That decision was not just geographical, it was philosophical. In a nation that mistakes relocation for progress, he made rootedness his rebellion. The Vembu model, dispersed offices, local hiring, sustained profitability, rebukes the 'growth at any cost' culture of Indian start-ups.

He calls it 'spiritual capitalism,' though the phrase invites derision. It is, however, less mystic than it sounds. It is just an effort to align enterprise with purpose, profit with place.

Vembu also provokes venom because he collapses easy binaries. He is both Tamil and nationalist, tech visionary and traditionalist, capitalist and community-builder. In a political ecosystem trained to slot every success into ideological boxes, such complexity is disorienting. The Dravidian elite can’t quite digest that their persona non grata community member is making all the right moves.

There's irony in Tamil Nadu’s intellectual mood. It applauds Tamil pride when expressed through slogans but not when embodied in success. For all its talk of indigenous empowerment, it struggles to celebrate a self-made Tamil entrepreneur whose worldview isn't prefixed with party symbols.

In truth, Vembu represents an older Tamil instinct, one that values learning, restraint, and continuity, and one that sees wealth as responsibility. It’s the same instinct that once produced mathematicians, administrators, and reformers who blended faith with reason. In today’s climate of ideological harshness, that lineage feels forgotten.

Vembu’s success reminds Tamil Nadu of what it once was, and what it could be again. A society that builds rather than belittles, that argues without annihilating, that measures worth by contribution, not caste.

Meanwhile, in Tenkasi, the workday ends early. As dusk settles over coconut groves and other farming fields, engineers log off, and Vembu cycles home, perhaps, thinking about a new product or line of code. Tomorrow they will all log in again, unperturbed by hashtags or headlines.

For decades, the Dravidian imagination drew its villain in a certain image. The Brahmin who built walls, not bridges, who thrived elsewhere, not here. Vembu has turned that myth inside out. His is a story of return, of roots, of a mind that finds purpose in the very soil he is said to have abandoned. And maybe that’s what truly unsettles the chorus against him. That a man they deemed outsider has chosen to belong and build, quietly and indelibly, in the dust and dignity of his own land.