According to The News Minute, a US court has told Zoho founder Sridhar Vembu to put up a bond of $1.7 billion, which is about Rs 15,278 crore. This is part of his divorce process with his separated wife, Pramila Srinivasan. The new development has brought more attention to the well-known court battle over child rights, marriage assets, and shares in Zoho Corporation. The order was made by a court in California earlier this year after Srinivasan asked for it in an emergency. This was the first time the court had ever given this order, but the court said it had to be done to protect Srinivasan’s rights to the marriage property.
The fight is over the couple’s assets that they’ve gathered while living in California for almost 30 years. California law says that property bought during a marriage is owned by both people, even if the assets are kept in different places.
The history of the dispute
Vembu, who went to IIT-Madras, moved to the US in 1989 to get his PhD at Princeton University. His wife, Srinivasan, is a scholar and businessman. They got married in 1993. Vembu started AdventNet with his brothers and a friend in 1996. In 2009, the company changed its name to Zoho Corporation. They have lived in California for almost 30 years and have an autistic son who is 26 years old. In 2019, Vembu moved to India and started running Zoho from the village where his family grew up in Tamil Nadu. Proceedings for divorce began in 2021.
Srinivasan said in court documents that Vembu left her and their son with special needs when he moved to India. She also said that he had given Zoho’s intellectual property and stock stakes to India without her permission and through complicated deals. She says that most of Vembu’s Zoho shares were given to his relatives, including his sister Radha Vembu, who owns about 47.8% of the company, and his brother Sekar Vembu, who owns about 35.2%. Vembu is said to still own about 5% of the company, which is worth about $225 million.
Srinivasan said that these moves broke California law that deals with common property. Vembu has rejected the claims, calling them “complete fiction,” and he has said that he is still paying his wife and son’s bills.
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Srinivasan turned down a deal to buy half of Vembu’s shares.
After hearing about the bond order, Vembu’s lawyer, Christopher C. Melcher, said the order was made almost a year ago based on what he called false claims. She wrote on the social media site X that Srinivasan had turned down an offer to buy half of Vembu’s shares in Zoho’s parent company. He also said that the bond order is not legal, can’t be followed, and is being appealed right now. Vembu hasn’t said anything about the news in public.
The result of the case is likely to have big effects on Zoho’s business structure and on one of India’s most famous tech leaders.
