All posts tagged office

  • Zoho: Coming From an Emerging Market Has it’s Advantages – Part II

    My Conversation with Zoho CEO, Sridhar Vembu

    In my last post, I spoke about my conversation with Sridhar Vembu, CEO of Zoho Corporation, an innovative software company headquartered in the US, but with most of their employees based in India and China.   I wrote mostly about the ingredients of the company’s success.  In this post, I’d like to delve a bit further into Sridhar’s vision and philosophy and its applicability to Latin America.

    While I was speaking with Sridhar, I was reminded of John Hagel’s book, The Only Sustainable Edge.  In it, Hagel mentions two important areas touched upon by the Zoho CEO. The first one has to do with Zoho’s ability to offer customers value at an affordable cost which is in synch with Hagel’s assertion that technology innovations are opportunities to “create more value at less cost.”  Zoho’s location, recruiting, training and company culture paired with its bet on cloud computing make are certainly aligned to a goal of creating more value at less cost for their customers.  Additionally, Hagel points out in his book that managing across two cultures “can create new opportunities to enhance performance by drawing on the best of both cultures.”  Certainly, this is not news to Sridhar who lives and breathes it every day. Read more

  • Zoho: Coming From an Emerging Market Has Its Advantages – Part I

    My Conversation with Zoho CEO, Sridhar Vembu

    A couple of days ago, I had the opportunity to talk with Sridhar Vembu, CEO of Zoho Corp, a strong player in the SaaS software market. The company’s corporate headquarters are in Pleasanton, California and the majority of it’s about 1000 employees are based out of India and China.  These and other characteristics make Zoho and Sridhar, who has spent half his life in India and half (presently) in the states, an excellent model for digital innovation in Latin America.

    First off, what really struck me about Sridhar after our chat was the balance of three key characteristics of his personality that came across:   1) His passion for the “people aspect” of building a business, 2) his practicality and incisive thoughtfulness and, finally, 3) an underlying, intense pride (in his people, what they’ve accomplished, etc.) and competitiveness.   Incidentally, my own opinion is that this type of open personality, high level of intelligence, balanced outlook and strong personal drive will be key leadership traits for achieving success in the coming years, but that’s a topic for another post. Read more