Zoho CEO: Better Design, Not More Money, Will Solve India’s Problems
Mani Vembu, CEO of Zoho, has argued that India’s biggest challenges cannot be solved simply by allocating more funds to infrastructure. According to him, better planning and smarter design decisions are often more important than the construction of massive projects.
Vembu shared his views on social media in response to a post by an X user that included a video showing severe flooding in Beijing, China, following just a few hours of heavy rain. The video illustrated how even major cities with advanced infrastructure can struggle when urban planning fails to account for natural challenges.
“What is the lesson here?” Vembu wrote. “You can’t prevent torrential rain. The only thing we can do is decide where the water should go: into our homes? Onto our roads? Or into spaces designed to retain excess water?”
What's the lesson from this?
Heavy rain can’t be avoided. All we can do is decide where the water should go. Our homes? Our roads? Or places designed to hold excess water?
For a country like India, public transport scales far better than road infrastructure built around private… https://t.co/AFuQf9RQTF
— Mani Vembu (@MVhandle)
August 5, 2026
The Zoho CEO explained that cities should be designed with the functioning of natural systems in mind, rather than simply expanding concrete infrastructure. He noted that public transport can be a more efficient solution for a country like India compared to the continuous expansion of road networks designed for private vehicles.
“For a country like India, public transport offers far better scalability than road infrastructure built around private cars,” Vembu stated. He added that better transport planning also allows for more space for trees, parks, bodies of water, and flood management systems. His comments come at a time when Indian cities are expanding rapidly and governments are investing huge sums in roads, highways, smart cities, and urban development projects. However, frequent flooding in various cities during the monsoon season has raised questions about drainage systems, land-use planning, and the impact of unchecked construction.
“Throwing more money at every problem won’t solve it,” said Vembu. “Some problems are better addressed through proper design than through larger-scale infrastructure.” Zoho’s focus on developing technology from India
Vembu’s remarks on design come as Zoho itself focuses on developing technology infrastructure within India. The Chennai-based enterprise software company recently unveiled its first locally designed server, named Nathu La, marking its entry into the data hardware sector.
The server was designed entirely by Zoho’s engineering teams and runs on Intel Xeon 6 processors. The company claims that data centres using Nathu La servers can deliver comparable performance while consuming 12% to 18% less energy and reducing the total cost of ownership by 20% to 30%.
Zoho noted that the server was created as part of a broader effort to control more layers of its technology stack, ranging from software and platforms to hardware infrastructure.
“Thanks to Zoho’s strategy of using contextual and right-sized models—running on our own platform and now on our own servers, and powered by our own GPU-accelerated database—we are multiplying the benefits of owning and operating our entire technology stack,” said Shailesh Davey, Executive Director of Zoho Corp.
The company stated that Nathu La was developed with applications such as artificial intelligence workloads, high-performance computing, virtualisation, and storage in mind. Zoho has also designed several components in-house, including the server management module and network interface systems. The company has registered five patents related to server architecture and thermal management. It also noted that the platform complies with open computing standards and was developed with a focus on energy efficiency and ease of maintenance.