Our Founder & CEO, Sekar Vembu, was recently featured in The Pioneer, in an interview built around a deceptively simple idea: the software industry is starting to face the trust problem where buyers can’t tell good products from bad ones.
Sekar, co-founded AdventNet (later known as Zoho) in 1996 and started Vembu Technologies in Chennai in 2002 has spent 3 decades building enterprise software trusted in over a hundred countries. That vantage point runs through the whole conversation.
A few highlights from the interview:
- On AI replacing developers: He pushed back on the idea that AI will soon build software end-to-end with little human oversight, arguing that domain expertise and human judgement remain essential as software keeps evolving to meet new use cases
- On where the real advantage goes: As building software gets cheaper, he believes horizontal SaaS will come under pressure, and that lasting advantage will belong to companies with deep, specialised knowledge of the industries they serve
- On Vembu’s own biggest “irrational” bet: Staying bootstrapped and independent looked like the wrong call when venture funding was the industry norm but in hindsight, it’s what let the company build at its own pace instead of an investor’s clock
- On advice for young founders: Fund the product through revenue and patience rather than chasing capital, and resist measuring success by how fast everyone else appears to be moving
The piece closes on a note we think about often at Vembu: trust isn’t something you can build quickly, no matter how fast software itself gets built. It’s earned the slow way through years of showing up for customers, product after product, release after release.
We’re proud that this way of building, steady, independent, and squarely focused on the customer, is getting a wider audience.
Read the full article on The Pioneer: India risks becoming a seller of lemons
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