Talent migration is among the biggest economic crisis today, says Sridhar Vembu

Sridhar Vembu, Founder and Chief Scientist, Zoho, speaks after receiving the Lifetime Achievement award from Rotary Club of Madras.
| Photo Credit:
Bijoy Ghosh

At a time when PM Modi is advising the country to buckle up for a tough ride, Sridhar Vembu, founder and Chief Scientist at Zoho Corp notes that India’s brain drain is economically harmful for the country, especially given the current geopolitical scenario. 

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The migration of talent out of India is an existential economic crisis; it affects the strength of the rupee, it is causing a huge forex deficit, and it is also leading to a technological deficit, Vembu said. 

“India’s brain power runs Silicon Valley, and we are in turn buying the services of those companies at a huge mark up,” Vembu said. 

The technology entrepreneur was speaking at the 43^rd weekly meeting of the Rotary Club of Madras, where he also received the Lifetime Achievement award. 

Vembu stressed that “success of the Indian community in the US depends on success of India itself.” 

“We are the most visibly successful minority in the US; that is bound to provoke resentment. It is important for India to be a strong nation for the sake of our Indian community,” he said.  

Impact of AI

Speaking about the impact of AI on the country’s software industry, he said that from software is eating the world, we are now at Anthropic is eating software. 

But it is not entirely there yet, Vembu said.

“We are finding that the productivity gains don’t hold up and there are many segments where it cannot create fully functional software yet,” Vembu added. 

He noted that sitting in Tenkasi and hiring a team of engineers including PhDs, he has been spending the last few years working on trying to make existing global frontier models irrelevant. 

“Either I am crazy or I will end up genius,” he said. I see this as the toughest fight of my professional life, he added. 

He cautioned software companies to accept the high stakes situation and they can go to zero or billions, he said. “I have already warned my employees about it,” he noted. 

Published on May 12, 2026