Zoho founder Sridhar Vembu called out India’s corporate elite on X, blaming their obsession with failed American business school doctrines for stunting the nation’s industrial growth, calling for a full intellectual pivot toward China’s model of production-first economics.
Vembu warned that India’s business leaders are chasing Western academic mirages while China quietly built an industrial empire.
“We in India must study China like a diligent student,” he wrote, dismissing the prevailing influence of American MBA theories—often taught by Indian professors—as a dead end.
Vembu singled out the idea of “shareholder value” as a key culprit behind America’s decline and took aim at management icon C.K. Prahalad’s “bottom of the pyramid” thesis, calling it nonsense.
“The only wealth at the bottom of the pyramid comes from transforming the poorest people into producers, not consumers,” he said.
He also blasted the popular push for “financial inclusion” in rural India, arguing that it often means little more than burdening the poor with more debt. “What our poor citizens need is the opportunity for productive work—jobs, jobs, jobs. Consumption only after production. Expense only after income,” Vembu wrote.
To underscore his point, Vembu shared a New York Times column spotlighting China’s rise from a low-cost manufacturing base to a tech and industrial powerhouse.
The column highlighted how companies like BYD (EVs), CATL (EV batteries), DJI (drones), and LONGi (solar wafers)—none older than 30 years—have gained global dominance not through state mandates, but by outcompeting rivals in a brutal, Darwinian industrial system. “The rest of the world is ill-prepared to compete with these apex predators,” the article warned.
“I am planning an industrial pilgrimage to China soon.” His message was clear—India won’t build its future by borrowing old American blueprints. It needs to forge its own, with lessons from the East.
