Zoho's Sridhar Vembu calls estranged wife's allegations 'complete fiction'

Zoho Corp's founder and chief executive officer (CEO) Sridhar Vembu

Indian SaaS major Zoho Corp's founder and chief executive officer (CEO) Sridhar Vembu took to Twitter and said that it is 'complete fiction that he abandoned his estranged wife and son'.

This comes just a day after US-based business magazine Forbes published a piece on how Zoho's Vembu had allegedly abandoned his soon-to-be ex-wife Pramila Srinivasan and their special needs son and is keeping them from receiving their fair share.

As per the Forbes report, in the divorce case in California, where they resided together for years, she claims Vembu deliberately got rid of a big chunk of his Zoho stake in a complex transaction that moved Zoho’s intellectual property to India and eventually placed the majority of the shares with his sister and her husband, without ever telling her.

However, Vembu in his Tweet said that no such transfers happened.

"I never ever transferred my shares in the company to anyone else. I lived in the US for the first 24 years of our 27-year history and much of what constitutes the company was built in India. That is reflected in the ownership," he wrote.

Vembu left San Francisco Bay area to settle in Mathalamparai region to build his company from the rural parts of India.

The Zoho CEO, based in Chennai, had in April shared photos of one of their new offices build in a farm. The company been focusing on opening more rural offices after employees were forced to return to their hometowns during lockdowns at the onset of the pandemic.

However, Srinivasan claims that Vembu left for India in early 2020 and never returned.

"He contacted her via WhatsApp in November 2020 to say he wanted
a divorce and filed papers in August 2021. In the divorce case in California, where they resided together for years, she claims Vembu deliberately got rid of a big chunk of his Zoho stake in a complex transaction that moved Zoho’s intellectual property to India and eventually placed the majority of the shares with his sister and her husband, without ever telling her,"as per the Forbes report.

For this Vembu said "As our son got older (24 today) I felt the endless treatments he was under were not helping much and he would be better off in rural India, closer to loving people and helping to lift up people. She felt I was giving up. Our marriage collapsed under that stress," in his Twitter.

Srinivasan states in a January court filing, “he decided to make fictitious transfers or ‘sales’ of our most valuable community asset to his
family members without their paying any cash or other consideration, and without ever telling me or asking my permission.”

However, Vembu in his series of Tweets said that his personal life, in contrast his business life, has been a long tragedy. "Autism destroyed our lives and left me suicidally depressed," he wrote.

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