Meet Silicon Valley Star Who Moved To His Village In Tamil Nadu To Be A Teacher

Imagine, a Silicon Valley star leaving his luxurious life in San Francisco Bay Area to move to his remote Indian village...it almost never happens! Except in Sridhar's case it did.

Sridhar valued by Forbes at nearly $2.5 billion

Sridhar Vembu, co-founder of Zoho Corporation, a Silicon Valley star valued by Forbes at nearly $2.5 billion moved to a small village in Tenkasi in southern Tamil Nadu last year. He started six months ago during the lockdown by giving tuitions to three students which took up about 3-4 hours of his day.

Courtesy: Zoho

School without marks or degrees

The 53-year-old is now all set to take this "lockdown experiment" to the next level: "a rural school start-up" that will provide free education and food, a model that doesn¡¯t believe in marks or degrees or conventional affiliations for certificates, or "credentials" as he calls it. He also told The Indian Express that his "start-up" will not seek affiliation with the CBSE or any other conventional educational board.

Courtesy: Forbes

On September 13, Vembu, who is an active Twitter user, posted: "Within few days, my social distanced open air class swelled from three kids to 25 and kids got unruly and I was struggling (smiley) and realised how hard it is to be a teacher."

1/ A few months ago, I started to informally tutor some village children because all schools were closed. Within a few days, my social-distanced open air class swelled from 3 kids to 25 and kids got unruly and I was struggling ? and realized how hard it is to be a teacher ??

¡ª Sridhar Vembu (@svembu) September 12, 2020

Sridhar Vembu who, in his late 20s, founded AdventNet in 1996 to make software products at a time when IT services were the rage. In 2009 he renamed the company Zoho Corp to reflect the transition from a software company serving network equipment vendors to an innovative online applications provider.

Forbes

Before the school, Zoho, which clocked an operating revenue of Rs 3,300 crore in financial year 2018-19 with more than 50 million clients, opened a few rural offices in Tamil Nadu during the lockdown to take software engineers back to their villages.

Journey from Silicon Valley to TN village

As of now, Zoho has two rural offices, one in Tenkasi and the other in Renigunta in Andhra Pradesh with 500 of its 9,300 employees globally working out of these; the plan is to have many more of its 8,800 India-based employees working out of non-urban India.

Vembu, who before moving to Tenkasi, lived in and around the Bay Area in San Jose and Pleasanton before the COVID-19 pandemic struck is not new to this template. Over the last decade, his Zoho University, a part of Zoho Corporation, has successfully managed the concept of helping Class 10, 11 and 12 dropouts to become IT professionals and team leaders in his own firm and others.