Sridhar Vembu's blueprint against global disruption calls for '5-10 year sprint' towards deep tech

The founder also called for a longer capital investment cycle in R&D, in order to catch up with the technological leap, and said the venture capital model of exits in 7-8 years will not do.

At a time of rising protectionism and global disruption, entrepreneur Sridhar Vembu has shared a blueprint to navigate the crisis, urging people to treat this as an opportunity to proactively build resilience and innovation.

Vembu's six-point summary, posted on social media platform X on August 27 said to navigate this new era requires acquiring all deep techs that India does not have, investing heavily in R&D, tapping rural Bharat's talent pool, and leading the way in energy-efficient growth.

The founder of cloud-based business solution provider Zoho called for a '5-10 year sprint' to catch up on deep tech. "Every tech we do not have is deep tech and I do not mean LLMs (alone) here and it includes advanced metallurgy, composite materials, DC motors, batteries, medical equipment, network equipment, drones, jet engines, robots, bioreactors and so on and on," Vembu said.

Read More: India’s Deep-Tech Moment: Building innovation for a $10 trillion future

Centre had last year approved a five-year budget of Rs 10,372 crore for the IndiaAI Mission, with the finance minister announcing a significant 48% hike in the FY26 allocation for MeitY, or Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology.

"In some areas, like GPUs or fighter jets, it may take 10-15 years, but we must put our heads down and do it," Vembu added.

Read More: Sridhar Vembu: 'Not in our national interest to pick fights with powerful nations'

The founder also called for a longer capital investment cycle in R&D, in order to catch up with the technological leap, and said the venture capital model of exits in 7-8 years will not do. "It promotes a short termism that is at odds with what our nation needs right now. More broadly, quarterly earnings cycles are a poor match for the long-term catch-up investment we have to make," Vembu said.

His other suggestion revolves around discouraging India's brightest talent from going into finance, as an India 'addicted' to this could lead to 'societal ruin'.

"...we must realize we are borrowing what failed America. It is a colossal misallocation of resources," said Vembu, referring to the painful and disruptive economic shocks of the Global Financial Crisis of 2007-08 which was triggered by risky financial practices and excessive leverage through engineered debt products.

"We must view making money on money with the appropriate caution that our ancients taught us."

Read More: Deep tech is India’s field to dominate, if we have faith in local talent

Instead, Vembu's silver bullet relies on India's untapped human capital. "There is a lot of raw young talent in rural Bharat that is waiting for the opportunity. Patient capital is about nurturing this talent, bring it on stream." Sridhar Vembu cited his experience of working with rural India in Zoho's R&D team. "JEE, NEET, UPSC etc do not capture the essence of this talent pool," he added.

Lastly, Vembu backed India's innate philosophy of living harmoniously with nature while pursuing a scientific temper. "Climate change is also a life style issue and Bharat has to be the light to the world in showing how to live in harmony with mother nature while building a technologically advanced society," Vembu said.