Vembu, CEO of Zoho Corporation, said that running a public company is a lot lot harder than running a private company. "It is like being on the treadmill all the time," he wrote in a post on X (formally Twitter).
"As a private company, we invest in long-term R&D and infrastructure without worrying about how quarterly numbers would look," he wrote
"Personally, as a public company CEO, I won't be able to live in a remote village and work on my own deep tech projects along with the school, the farm and rural works - the pressure to manage the stock price would be brutal and then I would have to transmit that pressure to everyone else in the company," read his post. "That relentless pressure leads to employee burnout and attrition."
"We remain private because I want to work with our people long-term on critical projects," he added.
The post garnered a lot of attention with many users appreciating his thoughts while some also highlighted the regulatory headache that follows after a company goes public.
One user asked him, "How will then the appetite for growth be served? Both the employee's and that of management's?"
In reponse, Zoho CEO wrote, "We are growing and promoting people as we grow, without pushing people so hard they burn out. We can afford that balanced attitude as a private company. Much harder as a public company."
Zoho FY23 results
Software-as-a-services (SaaS) player Zoho’s net profit in FY23 recorded an increase of 3 percent to Rs 2,836 crore. The company reported a net profit of Rs 2,749 crore in FY22.
Its revenue stood at Rs 8,703 crore, up 30 percent from Rs 6,710.8 crore last year based on the RoC filings by the company and sourced from Tofler. The growth at Zoho comes even as the demand for IT services and products has been impacted due to macro uncertainty.
The company also reported that the revenue from its Manage Engine, which is the enterprise IT management division, touched Rs 4,327.8 crore for FY23. The business unit saw revenue growth of 37 per cent over FY22.