Zoho co-founder and Chief Scientist Sridhar Vembu published an open letter urging Indians in America to return home and help build the nation's technological future. It was meant to be a heartfelt plea from one of India's most respected technology entrepreneurs. However, it drew a sharply contrarian response from one of India's most outspoken startup voices BharatPe co-founder and former Shark Tank India judge Ashneer Grover.
And Grover, never one to mince words, made his position crystal clear. Reposting Vembu's letter on social media, Grover offered a rebuttal that was equal parts blunt and pointed: "What delulu! Record breaking heat in India is clearly making people dizzy. Just DON'T - be scientific in your approach. Look at numbers - $1 = ₹94. Temperature = 50C."
For those familiar with Grover's public persona IIT Delhi and IIM Ahmedabad alumnus, the man who turned BharatPe into a $2.85 billion fintech unicorn and became a household name for his trademark candour on Shark Tank India, the response was entirely on brand. Where Vembu appealed to civilisational pride and national duty, Grover countered with hard economics and harsher climate realities.
The reaction has since gone viral, reigniting a debate that cuts to the heart of India's ongoing talent drain, and the question of whether emotional or rational arguments are better suited to address it.
What Vembu actually said
Dear brothers and sisters from Bharat:
Like I did 37 years ago, you arrived in America with no money but with a good education and cultural heritage from Bharat. You achieved outstanding success. America was good to us. For that we must remain grateful - gratitude is our Bharatiya way. Yet today, a significant number of Americans, may be not the majority but not too far from it either, believe that Indians "take away" American jobs and our success in America was unfairly earned.
You may think the next election will fix this, but your choice would be between people who hate our Bharatiya civilisation and people who hate civilisation itself. That is the "hard right" vs "woke left" battle. You are mere bystanders to that conflict. Meanwhile there is one thing that is true now and will be true in the future: the respect Indians command world-wide will substantially depend on the fortunes of India herself.
If India remains poor, the woke left will give us moral lectures with pity and the hard right, different moral lectures with scorn ("hellhole") and we must not confuse either with respect. Respect in today's world, along with prosperity and security, comes from one source: a nation's technological prowess. India produces sufficient brain power to achieve that prowess but alas we exported so much of that talent, particularly to America. As we develop that prowess in India, our civilisational strength will assert itself. As difficult as it is for many of you to contemplate this, please come back home.
Bharat Mata needs your talent. Our vast youthful population needs the technology leadership you gained over the years to guide them towards prosperity. Let's do it with a missionary zeal.
Respectfully Sridhar Vembu
