Zoho founder Sridhar Vembu has now elaborated on the decision why his company will not widen its work-from-home (WFH) policy, even after Prime Minister Narendra Modi encouraged organisations to reduce fuel consumption and minimise travel. Vembu has now stated that Zoho evaluated its approach on work-from-home internally but determined that in-person collaboration remains essential for efficiency especially in research and development. In a post shared on social media platform X (previously known as Twitter)
Vembu explained that issue-resolution in R&D teams is considerably quicker and more efficient when employees work faceto-face. Earlier this month, PM Modi encouraged citizens and organisations to adopt initiatives like carpooling, public transport, and WFH to bring down fuel consumption amid increasing global crude oil prices. He emphasised that virtual meetings and video conferencing, broadly adopted during the pandemic, should remain part of regular work culture. Read Zoho founder Sridhar Vembu X post here “Ultimately, after many people internally weighed in on my X post, we decided not to broaden WFH because the productivity of face to face problem solving is significantly higher in R&D. I have experienced this in my own development team - problems take longer to resolve when you are not meeting the people involved in solving the issue. Collaboration happens more naturally face to face and we come up with stronger solutions
We are exploring electric bus fleets and electric cooking in our canteens to conserve fuel. We have made major investments in solar already.”
Zoho concentrating on alternative sustainability measures
Instead of broadening WFH, Zoho is concentrating on other sustainability initiatives to align with the government’s call for reduced fuel usage:
Electric bus fleets for employee transportation.
Electric cooking in company canteens.
Solar energy investments to power operations sustainably.
Sridhar Vembu responds to Meta engineer’s post who says layoffs will continue till we learn to use AI Recently, Sridhar Vembu responded to a post by Meta engineer Arnav Gupta which stated that job cuts will continue till people learn to use artificial intelligence (AI) tools. Agreeing with Gupta’s perspective, Vembu shared the post on his timeline writing “Important post from Meta engineer Arnav Gupta on all the AI-led layoffs”. Vembu further continued: “As he explains clearly, AI has increased expenses massively for all tech companies. Our own AI bill is soaring and to add insult to injury, server prices have risen 200-300% in a year because the AI infrastructure boom is consuming all the advanced memory chips”. In the post, Sridhar Vembu stated that these layoffs are the economic response by tech companies to control the
main expense they control (people) to pay for AI and servers. “Of course most are presenting it as the result of the "AI
productivity miracle" but reality is more cost management than a productivity miracle, at least not yet,” he stated