ChatGPT is like the student who forgot the answers after the exam: Sridhar Vembu

There’s never a dull moment when Zoho Co-founder and CEO Sridhar Vembu is around. One always to speak his mind, he has become one of the most quotable founders in the Indian tech industry. He was at his eloquent best at a ManageEngine CIO meet in Chennai where he gave the keynote

Sridhar Vembu talked of the ending of the hype cycle of ChatGPT saying that its accuracy was declining with time and there were a number of people who were dropping off the ChatGPT bandwagon. They took an internal survey of employees where 8000 participated. Some 30% of employees saw their usage of ChatGPT decline while 15% stopped using it altogether. Citing a survey that said the accuracy AI model was going down, he commented: ChatGPT is like the student who forgot the answers after the exam!

Founder depression is a real thing: There is immense pressure on the Indian startup ecosystem. Sridhar Vembu said that startups have to live up to impossible standards. Paul Graham used to say that you have to measure growth every week. He added that he didn’t know how it was humanly possible to grow every week. It is very difficult to be under that kind of pressure. This is the same kind of pressure due to which students commit suicide in Kota. 

It happens when you put in large amounts of money and expect instant results. They call it founder depression. They feel they are not doing as well as other startups. Incubators can amplify that because you are watching a hundred companies in your cohort and maybe three of them are doing super well, maybe another 30 founders could get depressed. 

Demographic dividend—We have a 20-year runway: India recently became the largest population in the world with a rich demographic dividend. However, the world has the twin problem of declining demographics (birth rate) combined with heavy debt. India is seeing a major growth. We are in a relatively favourable demographic. We will hit these problems only 20 years later. So have 20 years of a runway. But we have to capitalize it for India2047, felt Sridhar Vembu.

Sridhar Vembu said When you are at the first stage of GDP, you can reach the middle level by improving production standards and setting up more factories. But there is a well-known thing called the middle-income trap that comes after that when you can’t compete anymore. Only with a heavy investment in R&D can you escape that trap.

Sridhar Vembu also talked of coming out with a Zoho laptop with its own OS along with medical and AR devices.