In a new social media post that’s igniting conversations on Indian innovation, Zoho’s founder and Chief Scientist, Sridhar Vembu, has called on his followers to break free from a “defeatist attitude” rooted in the nation’s colonial past.
In response to a viral post that compares Zoho’s office suite launches to Google’s, Vembu highlighted that true technological progress begins with self-belief. The original post that led Vembu to make the comment was a detailed infographic shared by investor @FI_InvestIndia on X (formerly Twitter), highlighting Zoho’s “silent” rivalry with Google over two decades.
The post reveals how Zoho often beat Google to market with essential productivity tools—long before the US tech giant dominated the cloud space.
Zoho was neck-and-neck with Google
Based on the timeline, here are some of the key milestones that underscore Zoho’s foresight:
September 2005: Zoho Writer, a word processor, launched a year before Google’s Docs.
April 2006: Zoho Sheet for spreadsheets, launched months before Google Sheets.
June 2006: Zoho Show for presentations, edging out Google Slides.
March 2007: Zoho Meeting for video conferencing, years ahead of Google Meet (2017).
Later innovations like Zoho Mail (2008), Zoho Calendar (2009), and Zoho Workplace (2020) further strengthened its software suite for emerging markets.
“Zoho has been competing with Google for over 20 years now… Kudos @svembu & team. Zoho is Underrated heavily,” @FI_InvestIndia wrote, urging more appreciation for Indian solutions.
Vembu replied humbly yet powerfully. “Thank you! Most important of all, all of this has been built by people who had never seen anything like these ever built… Our first challenge is to make ourselves believe ‘we can do this’.”
He attributed India’s innovation lag to a “tortured history,” where even educated elites harbour doubts, stating, “It cannot be done, definitely not in India. And the most defeatist of them become naysayers and it becomes self-fulfilling, he added.
“Escaping that mental trap is the most important part of it. Now that Zoho exists and is succeeding (slowly) in the world on its own terms, we can let go of that defeatism,” he said.
Drawing parallels to China’s resurgence after “100 years of national humiliation,” Vembu declared: “Bharat must rise and will rise. Tech is the most critical part of it.”
Vembu asked users on Arattai’s design
In a separate post, Vembu updated the status on the upcoming end-to-end encryption feature on Arattai. In a screenshot, Vembu asked his followers whether the E2E encryption should be offered as an optional extra or a default feature like WhatsApp. Despite a gradual decline in the popularity of the app, Zoho has been working hard behind the scenes to offer all the essential features that segment leaders like WhatsApp and Telegram offer.
