Sridhar Vembu, Founder of Zoho Corporation, recently took to the social media platform X to highlight a troubling trend. 

Highly educated Indian-Americans, particularly those with parents in engineering or technology, are increasingly moving toward careers in finance.

In a post dated March 18, 2025, Vembu noted that this shift echoes a decades-long pattern in the US, where some of the sharpest minds have been lured to Wall Street’s lucrative opportunities, often at the expense of innovation in other fields.

A personal perspective
Vembu’s perspective is deeply rooted in his own journey. After graduating from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras and earning a PhD from Princeton in 1994, he faced an important choice.

A former Silicon Valley engineer who had transitioned to finance urged him to join a quantitative trading team. Yet, guided by his father’s advice and his own values, Vembu opted for a less lucrative engineering role at Qualcomm. This decision set the stage for his founding of AdventNet in 1996, later rebranded as Zoho Corporation in 2009. Earlier this year, he stepped down as CEO to become Zoho’s Chief Scientist, focusing on deep research and development initiatives.

Focus not on societal challenges
Vembu argues that the growing preference for finance over fields like engineering, infrastructure, and healthcare is a worrisome development. He believes that while finance is vital to the economy, an overemphasis on “making money from money” diverts talent from solving pressing societal challenges. This trend, he cautions, could undermine a nation’s long-term strength, as economies are overly reliant on financial sectors. His warning resonates with broader concerns about the balance between wealth creation and tangible innovation.

The discussion on X amplified Vembu’s concerns, with users weighing in. One commenter noted that a recent slump in Indian markets sparked their interest in building something concrete, like a manufacturing business, rather than chasing the unpredictable waves of stock market gains.