Education has become increasingly unaffordable due to real estate: Zoho CEO Sridhar Vembu

Sridhar Zembu said Zoho is investing in school education to make it affordable and that schools run by them are free.

Billionaire and Zoho CEO Sreedhar Vembu has said that one of the major factors responsible for exorbitant school fees is expensive real estate in rural areas and towns. He added that it affects housing, retail, and even healthcare.

"Education has become increasingly unaffordable. A good part of it due to urban real estate (and even real estate around small towns) becoming extremely expensive; that affects education, health care and of course, housing and retail as well," Vembu wrote on X. He was responding to a Bengaluru-based venture capitalist, Aviral Bhatnagar, who shared that lower kindergarten fees in Hyderabad have reached Rs 3.7 lakh per annum.

"A lot of corruption money from politics is 'parked' in real estate and that has inflated prices beyond normal market forces. In a sense, all of us pay for political corruption in the form of expensive housing, schools and health care," the Zoho head said.

Education has become increasingly unaffordable. A good part of it due to urban real estate (and even real estate around small towns) becoming extremely expensive; that affects education, health care and of course, housing and retail as well.

A lot of corruption money from… https://t.co/UWaCUtjQTo

— Sridhar Vembu (@svembu) August 16, 2024

Zembu added that Zoho is investing in school education to make it affordable and that schools run by them are free. "But we can only do it in deep rural areas where land is affordable," he said.

Education in India has transformed in the last decade or more, with fees in schools and colleges witnessing a steep rise across different parts of the country.

In April, a Delhi man took to X  Friday to share that he had to pay Rs 4.3 lakh as yearly fees at his son's playschool and admitted that the amount was more than his entire education expense.

The man shared an image on the social media platform, which showed the term-wise split of the amount to be paid, in addition to a registration fee and an annual fee.

My son's Playschool fee is more than my entire education expense :)

I hope vo ache se khelna seekhle yaha! pic.twitter.com/PVgfvwQDuy

— Akash Kumar (@AkashTrader) April 12, 2024

According to the image, the man had to pay Rs 10,000 as a non-refundable registration fee, an annual fee of Rs 25,000 that was recurring and Rs 98,750 each for four three-month terms, between April 2024 and March 2025.

Around the same time, a real estate consultant in Gurugram has shared that he pays Rs 30,000 a month as his Class 3 son's school fees which the authorities keep increasing annually without offering any explanation to the parents. He pointed out that if the CBSE school continues to hike its fees by 10 percent every year, he would have to pay around Rs 9,00,000 per annum as fees when his son reaches Class 12.