We must purge the virus of subterranean separatism from Tamil Nadu politics. I often remind my team "We are drawn from the same pool of talent as any other company, we are not special in any way, and if we have to achieve better results, we must show that through our hard work and perseverance". Tamil Nadu is Bharat 🙏

Zoho views itself as "self-funding R&D labs". That is why we stay private. This model won't suit VCs or public investors. Outside of Zoho, we invest in founders (almost all engineers or scientists) with that same world view. Signal Chip and Netrasemi vTitan and Voxelgrids Ultraviolette and Boson Motors GenRobotics Zentron Labs and Pilabz ... and a few more not yet announced. All with this world view. None of them obsess about "exit". The last two even have "labs" in their name! The American approach of stock market capitalism is not the only path. We believe that model does not suit Bharat well, definitely not for building deep tech. We need a lot more "self-funding R&D labs". We will remain this way.

I would frame the issue facing Bharat as sovereign tech in general and not just sovereign AI. AI is the tip of a whole pyramid of capabilities, most of it we don't have and we don't even hear about. Most of those capabilities are not very expensive to acquire (unlike AI itself) - they require time and talent, and far smaller amounts of money than AI. As an example, Japanese firms we don't hear about have critical technologies that AI data centers need. Japanese play in many such critical sectors. I would recommend a broad national effort at every layer of the tech pyramid. We must do AI R&D but we must not lose sight of the pyramid.

Dr Abdul Kalam was a visionary way ahead of his time. He saw the need for sovereign tech back in 1998. We have to work hard to catch up now. It is doable, we have the talent. The private sector must make R&D a big priority and the government can assist. One concrete idea is to hold annual evaluations of critical tech capability across 100 critical sectors and publish a leaderboard in each area. Rank companies by capability. Let competitive forces do the rest. The government can also institute a prestigious "Dr Abdul Kalam Award" exclusively for engineers and scientists. We must do this annually and create visibility on the progress we make in each critical sector.

This is big: all access to Mythos and Fable AI models disabled for everyone outside America. First thoughts: 1. Technology is the ultimate weapon. National sovereignty, national security, all of it is now about technology. 2. Globalization is dead and Bharat must find her own way ahead. We must keep these two ideas in mind. What can our government do right now? Ensure that orgs in India embrace smaller models, both Indian and Chinese open source ones. With a bit of effort, we can make them work. Anyway, why pay money to people who don't even want to sell to you? We must deepen our R&D. Sarvam has been on it and we have been on it but remember that the latest models cost not only huge GPU budgets to train, the GPUs themselves are restricted. So we can't afford the scale of money (of the order of $100 billion to even get in the game!) and even if we could come up with the money, we can't get all the GPUs. I would not like to ask the government to fund tens of billions of dollars on this anyway - the money has far better uses. Zoho has been pursuing alternative R&D approaches that are far, far less expensive but by its nature cutting edge R&D takes time and we are patient. I am confident we will get there. Any remaining people in India who have delusions about globalization should wake up now.

As of 2026, Tamil Nadu is the only state in India that does not have any Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalayas (JNVs). As the name indicates, this policy was formulated when Congress was in power and the BJP has continued it. It is generally a bad idea for one state to keep resisting policies every other state, including non-BJP states, accept. DMK pursued that arrogant policy and lost. Given that the Congress is in the ruling alliance in Tamil Nadu, I hope they push for Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalaya schools in the interest of our Tamil Nadu students. Accepting Jawahar Navodaya Schools would not lose a single vote and in fact may win many votes from grateful parents. Pragmatism in such matters is politically wise.

The knife they sold us won't cut vegetables because it has the potential to be used to kill someone. No I am not talking about AI 😷

To understand the depth and breadth of what Prime Minister Modi has achieved, we must remember what he inherited. The Congress Party had a disastrous flirtation with Soviet style socialism (and the word "socialist" is still there in our Constitution, thanks to Indira Gandhi). With the Soviet collapse, India faced bankruptcy and the Congress switched to the Washington consensus, Davos-style globalism. To be fair to them, it looked reasonable in 1991, and people like me supported it, but far deeper thinkers like Gurumurthy saw that Davos globalism also as a dead-end. It met its end in the Global Financial Crisis 2008-9. Modi's Swadeshi philosophy has achieved the balance of building up our capability while also earning the respect of the world. Like all great transformations, it takes time. My prayers for his good health because so much work lies ahead 🙏

Our Nathu La server, unveiled today, took years of hard work by our Nagpur R&D team, led by Mangesh Sadafale. It is going into production in Zoho data centers around the world and will save energy and money. We are also working hard to make our entire software stack much more compute and memory efficient. R&D to the max!

Salesforce is running an ad claiming 40% off to beat Zoho. We have watched this playbook for years where they give deep discounts to get you in, followed by aggressive escalation once you're locked-in. Before you switch anything, ask them to show you standardised multi-year pricing. If they don't, that's your answer. Enterprise software is a con-game of "discount" bullshit by vendors like Salesforce. Buyer beware! As for "old CRM", Salesforce is a garbage bin of acquired enterprise software companies over decades, held together with bubble gum and duct tape.

Quoted post/article is a very good snapshot of the current global investment mood in AI, centered around America: extreme AI frenzy, massive capex boom focused on AI, all-time high corporate profit margins powered by the AI capex boom that creates immediate revenue and profits for suppliers but amortizes costs for buyers, extraordinarily rich valuations. On the mirror side, the external portfolio investor view on India is "they missed the bus on AI, gloomy tech outlook". We will happily take the "other side" of this bet: we don't want to chase the AI cash burn but we invest in all the "boring" categories of long term deep tech investments in India - I am looking at metallurgy as an example. In 10-15 years, we will see if this works out. This is not merely a patriotic message. Smart long term investors learn to avoid hype and fashion and figure out what is currently out of fashion that will work long term. Obligatory Warren Buffett quote: "Only when the tide goes out do you discover who's been swimming naked".

vTitan medical equipment update: we have been shipping steadily and a big shipment of syringe pumps is getting ready at the factory! We also have an affordable pump for Thalassemia (vTitan AccuFlow Thala pump) and over a thousand patients have benefited from it. Our R&D team is working hard on many more products. Our particular focus is on affordability. vTitan is teaching us a lot about hardware design and manufacturing.

Same Thoranamalai scene today during my commute, with the monsoon clouds covering the hills in the background and a steady drizzle which we call "saaral" in Tamil. The weather has turned very pleasant too. Glorious day to be alive 🙏

Karuvi update: these are the major issues that come up in power tools design. At 11000 rpm, does it overheat, does it vibrate too much and does it produce too much noise? We have to find parts that work well and are also price competitive. Low end Chinese power tools won't pass all the tests but they are very cheap. We decided we have to pass all the tests the Japanese and German tools would pass. Finally we have the product that meets that quality bar shipping to trial customers locally. Tooling costs are another major issue. We are planning a tool room. All this has taught us a lot of lessons. We will roll out a full line of tools later this year. To build anything that truly lasts, it takes time!