From 'come to India' to 'pray for us': Sridhar Vembu trolled for sending mixed messages to NRIs, he says, 'What is the alternative? Beg them to allow us to stay?'

Sridhar Vembu gets trolled for announcing that his employees won't get appraisal this year, days after urging NRIs to return to India and build for India. When the US administration announced the suspension of the Green Card process of eight top IT companies, including Microsoft, that would hugely impact Indian techies hoping to get permanent residency in the US, Zoho founder Sridhar Vembu urged these NRIs to return to India and build for India. Four days later, Vembu announced that Zoho employees will not receive their appraisal this year. In his post announcing the overall budget cut, he also added a "Please pray for us" and immediately got called out for his double standard. Social media users asked him why he was urging NRIs to return to India at a time his own company can't pay the employees their due salary hike.For Zoho's inability to give appraisals, Vembu blamed AI and a challenging geopolitical backdrop. He also said most of the employees understand the situation and he's thankful to them."The business outlook for software is uncertain and AI has raised costs dramatically with a) massive 4-fold increase in server prices which we need for data centers b) AI usage increasin...