'Not knowing Hindi is often a serious handicap for us in Tamil Nadu': Zoho's Sridhar Vembu

Zoho co-founder Sridhar Vembu has pointed out that as a tech company based in rural Tamil Nadu with a rapidly growing business that caters to customers mostly in Mumbai and Delhi, not knowing Hindi is a huge handicap. His comments come amid an ongoing language dispute in Tamil Nadu.

"As Zoho grows rapidly in India, we have rural engineers in Tamil Nadu working closely with customers in Mumbai and Delhi - so much of our business is driven from these cities and from Gujarat. Rural jobs in Tamil Nadu depend on us serving those customers well," Vembu said on Wednesday. The chief scientist at Zoho operates from a village in Tenkasi district. "Not knowing Hindi is often a serious handicap for us in Tamil Nadu."

He also said that it would be "smart" for the people of Tamil Nadu to learn Hindi and that he himself took five years to learn to read Hindi. "I can now understand about 20 percent of what is spoken," the Zoho boss said. "As India is a fast-growing economy, engineers and entrepreneurs in Tamil Nadu will be smart to learn Hindi. Ignore the politics, let us learn the language!"

Moreover, when a leader of the state's DMK party questioned him on why he was insisting that Tamilians learn Hindi when he had expanded Zoho to Saudi Arabia without learning Arabic, Vembu said that very often the company's counterparts in the Middle East turn out to be Indians who are mostly Malayalees, Tamilians, and Hindi, Urdu speakers.