Zoho founder Sridhar Vembu praised Union Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw‘s pitch about Indian Railways’ potential to dominate air travel. In a post on social media, Vembu agreed that a significant portion of domestic air travel should eventually shift to high-speed trains, noting that India’s geography is well-suited for such a model.
The tech entrepreneur, a frequent night train traveller himself, thanked Vaishnaw for focusing on accelerating railway projects. Vaishnaw had earlier stated that Indian Railways utilised 98% of its allocated budget in FY26, reflecting the rapid pace of project execution. He also highlighted that this progress has not compromised safety. According to him, the last financial year was the safest in the 170-year history of Indian Railways, with accidents dropping by nearly 90%.
Vembu stressed that large-scale railway development, including high-speed corridors and extensive local networks, could stimulate economic activity and generate employment, particularly in rural and semi-urban areas.
Sridhar Vembu’s economic boom prediction tied to Indian Railways’ progress
Asserting that India had the “ideal geography for trains,” including high speed and local trains, Vembu marvelled at how it could help one travel between Delhi and Mumbai or Chennai and Mumbai in the mere duration of four or five hours.
Then turning to the picture of local train networks in the country, he drew parallels between the offerings of Indian Railways and its Japanese counterpart. “Japan’s local train networks are a marvel of both engineering and business planning,” he wrote on X. “Japan has real estate companies that run private local train networks, connecting various suburbs/exurbs. They combine train stations with shopping malls, hospitals and the like.”
As for India, he said that Japan’s example presented a very interesting model that our country could build on for its convenience. “In India, a lot of idle capital locked up in semi-urban or urban real estate can be used to finance the build up by private companies,” he continued.
But on top of everything, Vembu spoke most passionately about building a 250,000 station network spanning “every panchayat in India.” He insisted that building such a grand network of railway stations will “massively stimulate the economy and create rural jobs. Vemby asserted further that once the infrastructure is taken care of, it will “attract higher value economic activity” and “set off a 10-15 year economic boom.”
Indian Railways’ current progress and boom
According to Vaishnaw’s admissions on Monday, 49,000 kilometres of railways tracks across India have been electrified, a feat that surpasses Germany’s progress on this front. He even praised the addition of 36,000 kilometres of new tracks, noting that travel time will be drastically reduced on many of these tracks, encouraging people to choose trains over flights.
Laying out the government’s current action plan, he said that officials were working on new corridors from Mumbai to Pune, which will cut down travel time to just 28 minutes between the two cities. Similarly, the distance between Pune and Hyderabad will be covered in 1 hour and 55 minutes, and Hyderabad and Bengaluru in around two hours.
On top of that, the time taken to travel from Bengaluru to Chennai will be reduced to 78 minutes, while Delhi to Varanasi will take 3 hours and 50 minutes, and Delhi to Lucknow’s travel duration will significantly come down to just about 2 hours.
“So nobody will fly. These sectors will be out for airlines,” Vaishnaw emphasised. “I’m reminding right away for those who want to invest in airlines. These sectors will be 99% dominated by railways.”