Born in 1968, in Umayalapuram, a village in Tamil Nadu, Sridhar grew up in Chennai, where his father was employed at the High Court. Starting his education in the native tongue, as that was the only free education option available for his middle class parents struggling to bring up a large family (four siblings), Sridhar architected a career for himself by dint of hard work and self-motivation. Switching to an English medium school for his higher-secondary, he self-taught his way into the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, before heading to Princeton University for a doctorate in Electrical Engineering. Today, he is the Founder and CEO of Zoho Corporation, a 10,000-employees software products company, one of the largest such companies in all of India, catering to more than 60 million customers worldwide.

Currently Sridhar is based out of a tiny remote town in Tamil Nadu, India and is a part time teacher. He is keen to build  “a rural school start-up” that will provide free education and food, a model that doesn’t believe in marks or degrees or conventional affiliations for certificates, or “credentials” as he calls it.