According to Sridhar Vembu, the co-founder of Zoho, Zoho wants to be a part of India’s ambition to lead the international supply chain.
In a bid to grow the semiconductor manufacturing landscape in the country, the global software business firm Zoho has now filed an application to the government, for commencing a new chip manufacturing unit in association with another company. According to Sridhar Vembu, the co-founder of Zoho, Zoho wants to be a part of India’s ambition to lead the international supply chain.
The co-founder’s comments are in-line with his recent interaction with media that shows Zoho’s keen interest in joining the chip industry. In fact, a media report also highlighted that the company was aiming to enter the semiconductor manufacturing ecosystem for a long time with an expected investment of $700 million. Zoho has been looking for government’s support and other additional sops. “We have applied with a partner, but the approval is yet to come. There is a stringent evaluation process,” Vembu told ET, without divulging details.
Headquartered in Chennai, Zoho offers state-of-the-art software services and also throws a tough competition to the US giant Microsoft. It has now turned out to be one of the very few software companies in the world who wants to foray into chip manufacturing with the help of government assistance. Currently, the union government has approved a total of four chip manufacturing and assembly plants out of which one is being set-up by Tata Group and PSMC group in a joint venture in Gujarat.
The semiconductor incentive package of Rs 76,000 Crore unleashed by the government in December 2021 was a layered incentive structure for all the applicants, but after sometime, the government ensured to provide 50 percent capital subsidy to all the successful applicants depending on how they are fulfilling their objectives. In an exclusive interaction with ET, Vembu said that moves by global tech companies to lay off people just to keep the profit numbers sharp as “too short-sighted”, adding that the culture should not develop in India.
“When there is a layoff when a company missed only one quarterly profit and they do it just to keep the number sharp. That's something I criticize as it’s not good, that's not a culture that we definitely don’t want to develop in India,” he said.
