Sridhar Vembu, chief scientist and co-founder of Zoho
We have not been growing our employee count for 18 months now. Chennai: Software-as-a-service company Zoho has paused employee pay hikes and cut marketing costs due to rising AI-related expenses and a challenging geopolitical environment.
He said that the company will work hard to avoid mass layoffs and that employees have been informed of the situation. We have also told our employees that we cannot have our usual pay increase this year. I have apologised for not being able to avoid this,” Vembu said.
In a post on X this Tuesday, founder and CEO Sridhar Vembu stated that AI usage has driven up costs significantly amid uncertain market conditions for software services. “We have cut down on our marketing budget. “We will work hard to avoid mass layoffs, but the outlook for software jobs in general is grim. He has long been a staunch critic of mass layoffs in the software industry, frequently contrasting the profit-driven, shareholder-first model of publicly listed companies with Zoho’s privately held structure.
The announcement comes as a surprise given Vembu’s historically conservative approach to hiring.