Sridhar Vembu, founder of Zoho, an Indian tech firm eying Kenyan market marred in family row
The founder and Chief Executive officer of Zoho Corp’s, an Indian based software technologies firm Sridhar Vembu is embroiled in a family dispute bordering between fraud and abandonment according to a court petition filed in a California court in the United States of America (USA) by his estranged wife of 29 years Pramila Srinivasan.
In an eruption of social media exchanges between the disgruntled couple, Vembu, in a tweet thread, denies allegations attributing the ensuing family crisis to his uncle.
The dramatic happenings coincided with the announcement that Zoho is eying the Kenyan market and is planning to have a subsidiary office in Nairobi.
“Zoho is committed to investing in local talent to provide the best possible service to its customers; this also reflects our strategy for business growth and expansion-transnational localism, in which we aim to be locally rooted while being globally connected…We look forward to working closely with the local business and empowering them digitally to drive growth and innovation.”” Veerakumar Natarajan, country head Zoho Corp Kenya said.
As this happened, miles away in California, Pramila is pushing the case against her husband for allegedly abandoning her and their 24 years old special need son.
She argues Vembu is keeping them from receiving their fair share.
Vembu, who recently relocated to a village in Tamil Nadu, filed for divorce from his wife in August 2021.
“My husband of 29 years abandoned me and his son with special needs in 2020,” Srinivasan said in her filing. “(And) he decided to make fictitious transfers or ‘sales’ of our most valuable community asset to his family members without their paying any cash or other consideration, and without ever telling me or asking my permission.” Pramila is quoted saying.
However, in a lengthy post, Vembu took to Twitter to deny these allegations.
“This is a deeply painful personal thread. My personal life, in contrast to my business life, has been a long tragedy. Autism destroyed our lives and left me suicidally depressed… My wife Pramila and I were in this fight against autism for over 15 years. She is a super mom and her passionate cause is curing our son of autism. As our son got older (24 today) I felt the endless treatments he was under were not helping much and he would be better off in rural India, closer to loving people and helping to lift up people. She felt I was giving up. Our marriage collapsed under that stress…Unfortunately the end of our marriage brought a new conflict. She is making unfounded allegations in court about my ownership interest in Zoho Corp and she has chosen to go to the press too. The matter is in court in the US, my filings are public.” Vembu tweeted.
He then added, “All of this mess was caused by my uncle Ram (my father’s younger brother) living in the US, who I gave shelter to due to his terminal cancer, taking out his own long running frustrations with my father. He is doing that by spreading malicious rumours about me and my siblings.”
Zoho, one of the most successful Indian tech companies offers software solutions to corporations and competes with similar products from the likes of Microsoft and Salesforce. Currently, the company is valued around $5 billion.
In their Kenyan subsidiary based in Westlands Nairobi, Zoho is soon expected to open an operational office as it seeks to grow its market share in the business software sector that is dominated by American firms including Microsoft and Google.
According to insiders, the office will also house a modern training centre equipped with a high-tech video conference facility for Zoho’s customers and partners with a capacity of 40 attendees who will have access to free training in matters of technology trends, and Zoho products.
