'Study China like a diligent student not American B-schools': Zoho's Sridhar Vembu says Indian intellectuals 'teaching nonsense'

Time of India

2 days ago

Zoho founder Sridhar Vembu urges India to emulate China's industrial transformation, criticizing the dominance of American business school ideologies in the Indian corporate world. He slammed Indian intellectuals for promoting consumerism among the poor, advocating instead for prioritizing production and job creation.
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India should study China like a diligent student and not the American business schools Zoho founder Sridhar Vembu . The enterpreneur today took to social media platform X to also slam Indian intellectual charlatans for 'teaching nonsense'He said the miracle of China's transformation from the "cheap labor, cheap goods" label to world-leading tech-driven industrial prowess is dawning on America's elite."We in India must study China like a diligent student. Unfortunately the ideas that dominate the Indian corporate world are still mostly from American business schools (and often Indian professors!)," Vembu wrote."It is those business schools that caused the decline of American prowess by teaching spurious doctrines like "shareholder value". The Chinese (like the Japanese before them) had no fascination with American business schools," Vembu added in the post.In scatching remarks on Indian teachers, he wrote, "We have had intellectual charlatans like C K Prahalad teaching nonsense like "wealth at the bottom of the pyramid" i.e, big companies should sell to the poorest people."Vembu argued that 'the only wealth at the bottom of the pyramid comes from transforming the poorest people into *producers* not consumers, first'."Yet this basic intellectual confusion between production and consumption still persists. Notice the "financial inclusion" language we often hear - all it amounts to in practise in rural India is "let's push even more debt to people who are already drowing in debt"," he added.According to the Zoho founder, poor Indians needs jobs."What our poor citizens need is the opportunity for productive work, first and foremost: jobs, jobs, jobs. Consumption only after production. Expense only after income," he wrote in the post.Vembu also said that bad philosophy is extremely costly to people and nations. "China recovered from Mao's disastrous philosophy. We can recover from Prahalad but we must first understand why that is wrong. I am planning an industrial pilgrimage to China soon," he added in the post.