Namaste!
The below excerpts are the summary of the inaugural speech given by Shri Sridhar Vembhu, CEO of Zoho Corporation, an event much tweeted as controversy, because RSS event.
Shri Sridhar Vembu, CEO of Zoho Corporation, today honoured the Resurgent Bharath event organised by the Rashtriya Swayam Sevak Sangh, IT Professionals Wing, Chennai.
He has addressed the inaugural speech to 450+ IT professional gathering, followed by, keynote address was given by Dr Anirudh Deshpande ji, All India member-outreach, RSS.
The programme was supported and co-ordinated by the RSS Chennai level RSS functionaries, IT Milan Ambattur, IT Milan, Anna Nagar, IT Milan Navalur, IT Milan Tambaram, IT Milan Chromepet, executive level karyakartas of RSS Chennai, Shri Prakash ji and Chandrasekar ji, Rajasekar ji, Sathish ji, and Sudharshan ji.
Shri Sridhar Vembu, while introducing himself, disclosed that he studied his 10th standard only in Tamil medium. He said at the business skill has s is not a naturally born skill. He and his brother from their US/Qualcomm work experiences, conversation s, and discussions had materialised the concept of building solutions to succeed in the IT business, today all know it as Zoho.
Shri Sridhar Vembu, with his simple dress code and humble attitude, addressed to the young audiences by highlighting some important and core issues of Resurging Bharath.
Most importantly, he addressed 2 issues. Firstly, lack of self-vision(low self-image), Secondly about self-reliance issues of our nation.
From his experiences and understandings he viewed that different kind of alienations are happening in Resurgent Bharath. Primarily, alienation is happening in every individual with different parameters, like the adoption of western culture influences, remaining loneliness, and succumbed to comparative competence living standards. He added that because of these above issues, the concepts of self-confidence, morality levels, and spending on unnecessary things have all gone up and there is lack of self-vision, as ch added that alienation has taken away the fundamental cultures, roots, concepts of ancient Bharath and Hindutva cultures.
Further, he addressed about some of the fundamental national issues, covered topics ranging from economics, technology, language, self-reliance, rural growth and missing contribution of Indian diaspora.
On these fundamental issues, he firmly states from his business experience that the English language is not a barrier and the competence in English shall not be taken as a measurement for growth or knowledge or awareness or creating technologies. As his business policy, his company recruits engineers without considering the ability to speak English. he added that technical subjects should be tought in mother tongue.
On the economy, though he said that he is not PhD economist but just a PhD in engineering, he said that advises given by PhD economist sitting in US and who never spent their youth life in India, not suitable to comment on India’s economy considering the different socio-economic culture here and the population numbers of India. Especially, in India 27 million babies are born when compared to 1.5 million babies in the US, so a PhD economist from US cannot give an analysis or advise to India.
On the technology he added that India is far behind in technology, and further added that any technology development requires a 10 to 15 years development cycle to reach a commercial stage. Today, India is completely depending on the international market, buying metro train technologies from abroad while, we hardly export anything such from where we import technology(Brazil) .
He emphasized that the need of the hour is to have home grown technologies and at the same time have balanced imports and exports of technologies. He said, his businesses are also focusing on technologies like medical equipments and telecom etc.
From his experience he observed that every product development requires atleast 5 years of testing, struggle, and development to improve and to become a fully usable product. India’s problem is not tax or tax codes, the problem is that we are yet to understand the eco system of Research and Development and focus on technologies to produce more and to grab export markets.
In his speech, he quite often compared the Japanese, Koreans, Chinese, and Germans for their policies on their mother languages and investments on technologies. Resurging India should grow to that level of contribution to cater to the world markets.
India’s problem is that we are more depending on imports for most of our consumptions and this condition should change, he added that his business is now focusing on other technologies and Industries not because to make money but in order to reduce dependency of foreign companies.
Furthermore, while comparing the western cultures, he added that for 100 years China tried to adopt western cultures, but failed. He said that the Western influence cannot be relied and if we continue to depend on the foreign resources, another East India company will take over us.
He specifically advised to the corporates and IT professionals to let the juniors to learn more than you, apprenticeship and internal training system should be given importances.
He added that the rural and rural economy to be given focus, and job opportunity to be created for rural youth and smaller towns should grow.
Finally, he added that top soil layer of India’s fertile land has already been exported , which he meant that well educated and leaders have gone and settled in the western countries, as India’s exports, and such Indian diaspora who might have made money, should contribute to their village growth.
In overall, his views are very reliable to the present circumstances of the Indian economy and technologies and it is for the Young Indians to stay remain with their roots and to travel by resolving above issues and see Resurging Bharath in reality.
Thanks
Devarajan G
02.02.2020, APL Global School, Thuraipakkam