In search of a leader 

This is a fascinating story of a servant leader’s journey in creating a company on a foundation of strong values and principles. Personally, for me, it is a completion of a “gestalt” about leadership and my search for a leader and a role model. 

Finding inspiration is difficult these days, some authentic real-life stories like these bring back the sense of direction and purpose. 

It has been a journey of 20 years of exploring various dimensions of Leadership. It was also a search for a role model, whom I can admire, relate to and learn from.

My interest in leadership was ignited during my first job at Wipro when my friend Manju, mentioned about Stephen Covey’s book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. That book was fascinating and mentions about leaders, leadership and various dimensions around it. Since then I have explored various sources on leadership and their styles from Gandhi to Hitler, Dalai Lama to Steve Jobs, Read many books in the Warren Bennis series on Leadership, studied various views from Ayan Rand to some Indian mythology, attended many courses and workshops as well. 

My search came to an end when I came across the fascinating story of this Leader.

The leader is Sridhar Vembu founder and CEO of Zoho.  He started Zoho with other co-founders about 20 years back in Chennai, now it is one of the most successful software product/SAS company from India with 40 plus applications used by more than 13 million users globally. It also competes with global giants like Salesforce.

In fact, Forbes described in an article Sridhar as the “Smartest Unknown Indian Entrepreneur”. 

This finding was for me like the Santiago Shepherd boy, the protagonist of The Alchemist finding his treasure.  

About Sridhar Vembu 

The journey of Sridhar is not a story of a bold vision and then driving it relentlessly till it is realized nor a story of breakthrough innovation and creating a billion-dollar company, or about rags to riches. But this is a story of failures and learning from those failures, it is about entrepreneurship, starting small and focusing on serving customers, this is a story of self-realization, principles, values and trust, it is about finding the reason for existence, this is about redefining the meaning of business itself.

The best part of this discovery is most people in India can relate to it.  Personally, I could relate to most of his experiences and principles.  

Sridhar did his degree in electrical engineering from IIT Madras and PhD from Princeton, it sounds like typical success formula right? But after all these qualifications he realised the real value of “education”. He concluded that the context-free education has very less value. That realisation helped Zoho in creating the Zoho University (ZU), which takes underprivileged students from the local schools and provides them the relevant training. Once the students finish their training, they are given a job in the company.  

Entrepreneurship 

There many interesting stories around Sridhar and Zoho, like not focusing on profit but focusing on delivering value, not focusing on formal qualifications while hiring etc. 

Sridhar values freedom over money, this is one of the reasons it is not externally funded.  His suggestion for entrepreneurs is also inspiring, The first, one is around bootstrapping and not taking external funding.  He gives the example of the neighbourhood vegetable vendor and how they manage their business. 

Next suggestion is starting with year -5 years, yes it takes about 5 years to learn about the business. 

The final point I noted down was around success and survival.  If you have a clear set of values and principles then if you can survive then you will succeed. 

My inspiration 

What I liked the most about Sridhar is, he is not perfect, his presentation style is not great, his appearance is also not stylish and he is perfectly fine with it. You can not miss the authenticity in his eyes and voice. This is what makes him special. 

After completing his PhD, he went through a phase of deep reflection, confusion and transformation. That is the genesis of his journey.  It started with a small group of people trying to start a company. In the last 20 years, the company has grown from a small company into a major corporation with more than 40 products and more than 13 million users and more than 9000 employees across the globe.   

Final note 

Sridhar has interesting views on Leadership, culture entrepreneurship, building a company, innovation, role of education. I can write a series of blogs (maybe I will do that) but let me complete this blog with the message he had shared with students of Sastra University on their 31st convocation. 

“… you have 24 hours in a day. As you grow older you realize how valuable the time is, I sometimes feel my life is over and have I done enough with it? Time is the only thing you have actually. Money can buy lots of things but it can not buy time. The quality of thinking is the only thing that separates from successful from not successful. Quality of thinking means that. What type of thoughts going on in your head? You can spend 3 hours getting angry at another person. You can spend an entire day being disappointed by something….  Those are also thoughts in our head. But those thoughts are useless thoughts….. Some good thoughts might spark some ideas and from those ideas, the actions happen. Those actions can lead you somewhere. … purge all the unproductive thoughts. Angry thoughts, resentful thoughts or sad thoughts all of these. Fill your head with quality thoughts. Learn to use your time wisely… Thank you”.  

Epilogue

The title Monk who built his own Ferrari is inspired by Robin Sharm’s Monk who sold his Ferrari.  Though Sridhar doesn’t live like a monk. He has spent millions of dollars on a team for designing and developing an indigenous microprocessor chip. That is his Ferrari. 

Personal Note:

1. I take full responsibility for any errors, omissions and misrepresentation. As a reader, if you find any mistakes please bring it my notice and I will correct them. 
2. Source of all the information is from the Internet. My apologies for not keeping track of all the references.
3. If you have any other question and feedback please write to me at mithare@gmail.com  
4. If you liked this post then please share with others. 

End quote 

“ A stupid man’s report of what a clever man says is never accurate because he unconsciously translates what he hears into something that he can understand”  – Bertand Russell 

By Raghavendra (Raghav) Mithare

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Raghavendra (Raghav) Mithare is Regional Head for ProcessWhirl Management Consulting, UK and he is based in London, he is a professional coach, Agile consultant, Speaker and aspiring writer. His interests include Leadership, Philosophy, Economics and engineering.  You can reach him at rmithare@processwhirl.com