Zoho founder Sridhar Vembu announced on Wednesday that he will step back from external engagements starting next week to focus on coding and product development work he had committed to but fallen behind on. The billionaire entrepreneur said he risks contradicting his own principle of “do not preach what you do not practise” if he continues with external appearances while neglecting hands-on technical work.“I have to ship some code I had committed to ship and I have fallen behind. I will take a break from external engagements after this week,” Vembu wrote on X (formerly Twitter). “I cannot do both deep tech work (which I am preaching constantly about in my external engagements) and then only do the preaching and not practising it myself.”

Vembu dedicates 70% of time to coding as chief scientist

The announcement comes as Vembu has been increasingly focused on his role as Chief Scientist at Zoho, a position he transitioned to earlier this year after stepping down as CEO in January. In an interview with Moneycontrol, Vembu revealed that he now spends approximately 70% of his time writing and reviewing code, and he wants to increase that proportion even further.“I review code every day. In fact, I file a lot of patents. So that’s the change in life. I enjoy the life. I’m meant to do this, I feel,” Vembu said.

Sridhar Vembu could be coding the end-to-end encryption for Arattai

The code Vembu is working to ship appears to include end-to-end encryption for Arattai, Zoho’s messaging platform. In a series of posts on X earlier this month, Vembu revealed that the feature was originally scheduled for November but has been put on an “accelerated schedule” and is currently in testing.He explained that unlike Zoho Cliq, which stores data in the cloud for business features like search and archiving, Arattai will turn off cloud storage entirely to offer fully encrypted chat that keeps data only on user devices.Vembu emphasised that Zoho’s entire SaaS business is built on the trust that the company does not access customer data or use it for selling products, with end-to-end encryption adding an additional technical layer to that commitment.