'We decided not to expand WFH': Zoho's Sridhar Vembu explains why

Zoho founder Sridhar Vembu said on Monday that his company had decided not to expand work-from-home arrangements after internal discussions concluded that face-to-face collaboration remained more effective for research and development teams.

"Ultimately, after a lot of people inside weighed in on my X post, we decided not to expand WFH because the productivity of face-to-face problem solving is much higher in R&D," Vembu wrote on X.

The comments came days after Vembu had indicated the company was reconsidering its work-from-home policy following Prime Minister Narendra Modi's appeal to reduce fuel consumption and unnecessary travel.

On May 11, Vembu wrote: "I hope all of us heed the Prime Minister's appeal. As a company, we adopted Work From Office fully in recent months, but we will revisit Work From Home now."

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At the time, he had also said the company was looking at ways to reduce diesel consumption and had adopted natural farming practices.

In his latest post, however, Vembu said in-person collaboration led to faster problem solving and stronger outcomes in software development. "I have experienced this in my own development team - issues take longer to resolve when you are not meeting the people involved in solving the problem," he wrote. "Collaboration happens more fluidly face to face, and we come up with better solutions."

Vembu said Zoho would instead focus on other measures to reduce fuel use and energy consumption. "We are looking at electric bus fleets and electric cooking in our canteens to save fuel. We have made heavy investments in solar already," he said.

Earlier this month, Modi urged citizens to reduce petrol and diesel consumption, postpone gold purchases, and avoid foreign travel for one year as rising crude oil and fertiliser prices put pressure on the economy amid the ongoing West Asia conflict.

Addressing a rally in Telangana, PM Modi called for wider use of metro rail, public transport, electric vehicles, and carpooling. "We got into work-from-home, virtual meetings, video conferencing, and many other methods during COVID-19. We got habituated to them. The need of the hour is to resume those methods," the Prime Minister said.

He also urged people to reduce edible oil consumption, avoid buying gold for one year, adopt Swadeshi products, and move towards natural farming. "We have to save foreign exchange by any means," Modi said.