Mani Vembu

[Mani Vembu @MVhandle]

What's interesting is the number of use cases he explains without talking about features.

Features tell what you've built. Use cases tell what customers can do with it.

[Massimo @Rainmaker1973]

Steve Jobs literally predicted the iPhone, the Internet, AI and the next 50 years of technology in a single speech from 1983.

[Mani Vembu @MVhandle]

@Acquirejobskill For this, you can try TrainerCentral. This is built for coaching center’s and independent content creators.

https://t.co/vdXsk29zLG

[Mani Vembu @MVhandle]

Yesterday, we launced Zoho Classes 2.0.

Teaching has become more demanding than ever.

Teachers spend a lot of time preparing lessons, grading assignments, answering repetitive questions, and managing day-to-day administration. Students expect learning to happen beyond the classroom, at their own pace, and on any device.

Technology should make this easier. At its best, it should democratise access to quality education, regardless of geography, language, or institutional resources.

That's what we've built with Zoho Classes 2.0. At its best, it should democratise access to quality education, regardless of geography, language, or institutional resources.

To solve this, we've blended AI into the everyday work of teachers and students. It helps teachers spend less time on repetitive work and more time teaching. It helps students learn at their own pace, revisit lessons whenever they want, and get help when they need it.

Learning doesn't stop when the class ends. Zoho Classes extends that interaction between teachers & students beyond the classroom.

We've also made Zoho Classes available in all 22 scheduled Indian languages. And to make quality education accessible to more learners, it's free for all Central and State Government schools, colleges, and universities in India. Any educator can also use it free for up to 100 students.

We're excited to see what teachers build with Zoho Classes 2.0.

[Mani Vembu @MVhandle]

@Acquirejobskill You can try Classes from https://t.co/IKU7EsBLzH

[Mani Vembu @MVhandle]

Not every simple lifestyle comes from financial trauma. Sometimes it comes from values.

My parents chose a simple life not because they couldn't afford more, but because they never saw lifestyle as something to upgrade for status.

Today, we're trained to believe that every increase in income should come with an increase in lifestyle. As if success has to be visible.

But upgrading your lifestyle is a choice, not an obligation. There is nothing wrong with spending on convenience or experiences if they genuinely improve your life.

There is also nothing wrong with choosing simplicity because that's how you want to live. The real freedom is having the ability to choose, instead of letting social expectations make the choice for you.

[Prem Soni @ValueWithPrem]

Your parents are suffering from untreated financial trauma.

Indian parents will sit on ₹5 crores of real estate and fixed deposits yet still walk in 40°C heat and fight a street vendor to save ₹15 on tomatoes. They proudly call this middle class values.

It is not. It is a poverty mindset they are absolutely terrified to outgrow.

They built a life optimizing for survival because of the circumstances at that time and now expect you to inherit that as a badge of honor. When they see you paying delivery charges or booking Urban Company, they don't get angry because you are wasting just money. They get angry because your convenience makes their decades of unnecessary suffering look completely pointless.

They forgot one brutal reality: they are not the permanent owners of their wealth. They are simply temporary custodians of it.

They spent their turn hoarding money out of a deeply ingrained fear of going broke. But that era is over. Now the time to use that money is yours. And that’s exactly how this works.

You are not disrespecting their legacy by valuing an hour of your time over ₹15 bus travel. You are actually fulfilling the purpose of the wealth they built. They have won in life.

You cannot inherit generational wealth if you are forced to inherit the trauma of poverty along with it.

Stop romanticizing their struggle, step into your role and unapologetically play your turn.

[Mani Vembu @MVhandle]

Recently, I've come across a few businesses with strong execution and good revenue, yet they weren't profitable.

Their margins couldn't cover the cost of debt. Customer payments were delayed, cash remained locked up, and they kept borrowing to keep the business running.

Over time, new debt started paying for old debt as they chased more revenue and expansion.

Watching their business, I couldn't help but feel that they were working hard to make their financiers rich.

Revenue is important. Growth is important. But without healthy margins and cash flow, it is the financier who benefits from your effort.

[Prakash Dadlani @prakdadlani]

I was 24 when I started my first factory in China.

I named it Nishica after my wife, Nisha.

By the time I was 26, the business was doing ₹300 crore a year.

Every day, we were loading containers full of electronics.

The business was growing so fast that I thought I had figured life out.

I bought expensive watches, invested in properties, and flew business class.

There was plenty of credit in the market, and I had big bank loans.

But I was constantly stressed about work.

I believed the good times would never end.

Then suddenly, it all came crashing down.

Today, my turnover is only one-tenth of what it was.

But this time, the business is self-funded.

We spend carefully.

We grow slowly.

And most importantly, I'm 10x happier.

Life teaches everyone.

Sometimes with rewards.

Sometimes with beatings.

The only thing that matters is whether you learn the lesson.

I'm grateful I've seen the highs, the lows, and everything in between.

Because today, I'm probably at the happiest place in my life, building with a purpose in Bharat 🇮🇳

[Mani Vembu @MVhandle]

Will AI shift the focus of B2B software companies from deploying applications to onboarding digital employees?

Recently, Microsoft announced Microsoft Frontier Company, an AI implementation unit with 6,000 employees. The announcement is significant because it reflects a fundamental shift in B2B software. The focus is moving from deploying applications to onboarding digital employees.

B2B software business was built around a simple idea. Build one product. Sell it to thousands of businesses.

Whether it was a CRM, accounting software, email, or a help desk, every customer used essentially the same product. They configured or customized it differently, but the underlying software remained the same.

That is what made PLG so powerful.

AI is going to change that. It is not because software is disappearing. It is because the nature of software is changing.

Traditional software helped people do their jobs.

CRM helped salespeople manage customers, help desk helped support teams manage tickets, accounting software helped companies manage their finance. The software was just the tool but it was the human who did all the work.

AI agents are different. They are no longer just tools. They are expected to perform parts of the work that humans used to do.

Customer support agents answer customer questions. Sales teams qualify leads and follow up. Marketers create content & campaigns to promote their products or services. In other words, AI agents are not replacing software. They are trying to replace parts of human work. And that is where it will be challenging.

When a salesperson joins a new company, they do not become productive on day one. They spend time learning the products, pricing, competitors, customers, company policies, and sales process. A marketer learns the company's brand, messaging, and audience. A support engineer learns the product & goes through the documentation before answering customer questions.

It is the same for every new hire across any new role. Every company trains their employees differently because every business is different. AI agents need the same training. An AI support agent that works well for one customer won't automatically work for another.

That is because every business has different products, different documentation, different policies, different terminology, different workflows, different ways of serving customers. Unlike SaaS, it's not going to be "one size fits all" in many categories for business software.

Customers are no longer deploying or implementing software. They are going to onboard a digital employee. That onboarding will take effort. The agent needs to learn the business. It needs access to the right knowledge and to be tested on real-world scenarios. It also needs feedback when it makes a mistake.

It needs to know when it knows the answer and when it should hand over the conversation to a human. This is not a one-time activity.

As products change, policies evolve, and new knowledge is created, the agent must continue learning. That is why AI deployment will require much more human effort than SaaS deployment. The software may be the same but the knowledge is not.

There is going to be a major shift in focus in enterprise software companies. In the past, the success strategy was Product-led growth. Build a great product. Make onboarding effortless, and the customers will discover value on their own.

In the AI era, another capability will become equally important. Assisting customers to educate, deploy, evaluate, and continuously improve their AI agents. The companies that do this well will not just sell software. They will also help customers build capable digital employees.

So I expect the next era of growth for enterprise software will not come only from products. It will come from assisting customers with onboarding AI agents.

Because in the age of AI, software is not just being implemented. It is being taught.

Will educating AI agents become as important as implementing software?

[Mani Vembu @MVhandle]

@saniwangara5 @svembu We do have our presence in Nigeria and we are investing heavily in developing countries.

https://t.co/qtMYOd3RIG

[Prakash Dadlani @prakdadlani]

In the last 12 months, I've been featured 10+ times by some of India's biggest media houses.

I'm grateful for every feature.

But the truth is:

Nothing changed at the policy level.

One voice is not enough.

If we want better manufacturing, easier exports, and stronger factories...

More founders need to share:
- The problems they face
- The wins they achieve
- The lessons they learn

Real stories create real change.

I'll keep speaking.

I hope more builders join me.

[Mani Vembu @MVhandle]

Agile is a disease invented by people who want to be punished for their salary.

I don't think Agile is the problem. The problem is how we practice it.

The original idea was simple. Don't wait until you know everything. Build, understand, learn from failure, and adapt as you go.

Unfortunately, many teams use Agile for reporting instead of understanding / learning.

[IT Unprofessional @it_unprofession]

We hired a new VP of Engineering who is obsessed with agile methodology.

He called a meeting on his first day and said we need to transition to 2-week development sprints.

He wanted daily stand-ups, retrospective boards, and continuous deployment pipelines.

He wanted us to actually write new code.

I realized immediately that he was an existential threat to my lifestyle.

I let him finish his impassioned speech about workflow velocity.

Then I stood up, walked to the whiteboard, and drew a single horizontal line.

I told him agile sprints are a localized solution for a localized mindset.

I said our infrastructure operates on a Zenith Release Cycle.

He asked what a Zenith Release Cycle was.

I told him it's a holistic, macro-stabilization framework where we observe the system in a state of prolonged stasis.

By not touching the code for 18 months, we allow the legacy dependencies to organically settle.

I told him that deploying bi-weekly updates creates micro-abrasions in our database architecture.

I used the phrase chronological data scarring.

The CEO was in the room and audibly gasped.

He told the new VP that we can't risk chronological data scarring just to satisfy a trendy tech buzzword.

The VP looked at me like I'd just invented a new color.

He was completely paralyzed by the sheer density of my fabricated jargon.

He quietly agreed to adopt the Zenith Release Cycle.

We're officially scheduled to deploy our next update in the third quarter of 2027.

I spent the rest of the afternoon buying things I don't need on Amazon.

Agile is a disease invented by people who want to be punished for their salary.

I refuse to participate in my own suffering.

[Mani Vembu @MVhandle]

@prakdadlani As long as there is no debt, it's okay to bet. Some lessons can only be learned by doing. That experience might be more useful than the current savings.

[Mani Vembu @MVhandle]

Source: I made it up.

[Joy @Joydas]

Sridhar Vembu announced that he will be disabling the user name based account feature in Arattai. According to latest Survey, 70% of Arattai users supported this move. Rest 3 were not sure

[Mani Vembu @MVhandle]

Thanks for the live progress update 😄

We're running a marathon, not a 100-meter race. The finish line is success & not today's user count.

And since we're not burning OPM, nobody can eliminate us from the race. We can keep running as long as it takes.

[Ramesh Srivats @rameshsrivats]

Of course. User name problem only comes when you have users.

[News Arena India @NewsArenaIndia]

Andhra Pradesh mechanic builds homemade escalator to help wife climb stairs.

A 65-year-old mechanic, Satti Siva Narayana Reddy from Arthamuru village in East Godavari district, has designed and built a homemade escalator to help his wife, Satyaveni (58), climb the 21 steps leading to the first floor of their house.

He added that the idea had been planned two years ago but was completed recently.

[Mani Vembu @MVhandle]

This is true for product businesses too.

Revenue comes from today's products. Tomorrow's revenue comes from today's experiments.

Never stop building. Never stop experimenting. That's how you build the capability for tomorrow.

[Dustin @r0ck3t23]

Egypt forgot how to build the pyramids.

Rome forgot how to build the aqueducts. Some still carry water today. What they built still stands. Neither civilization remembers how they did it.

Musk: “You look at great civilizations like ancient Egypt, and they were able to make the pyramids, and they forgot how to do that.”

Musk: “And the Romans, they built these incredible aqueducts. They forgot how to do it.”

No army invaded them. The knowledge just stopped getting used, and the moment it did, it was gone.

Same collapse. Compressed into fifty years instead of a thousand.

Musk: “In 1969, we were able to send somebody to the moon… Then the space shuttle retired, and the United States could take no one to orbit.”

Musk: “People are mistaken when they think that technology just automatically improves… it will, by itself, degrade.”

Capability doesn’t sit in a vault. It only exists inside the people doing the work right now.

The second they stop, it doesn’t pause.

It disappears.

That should not scare you. It should focus you.

Nobody loses a civilization to war. They lose it the moment they stop building.

Nobody is owed the future. It belongs to whoever keeps building it.

[Mani Vembu @MVhandle]

As a business, we have never sought influence or favours from any government or public official. We follow the same process as everyone else and our teams work with the concerned departments, submit the required documents, and patiently follow up until approvals are granted.

For example, when we moved to our Estancia campus in 2013, it took us more than six months to get an electricity connection. We did not approach anyone in power or seek special treatment. We simply followed the process until it was completed.

While some delays are manageable, others do affect our expansion plans and the pace at which we can create jobs and invest further. Even then, our approach has remained the same: follow the process rather than seek favours.

That has been our approach with every approval, regardless of which government was in power. The other fact is also that none in the management (except Sridhar) knows anyone in power.

[Deedy @deedydas]

WhatsApp may be the statistically best app we've ever made.

It's a product manager's dream with its unparalleled addictiveness (DAU / MAU) of 87% and stickiness (M1 retention) of 86%, both #1 in the world while having the #1 most monthly active users for any non preinstalled app of 2.7B users.

Here are the top 25 most used apps in the world by MAU on both these metrics. Some surprising observations:
— There are now 15 1B+ user apps in the world, 8 by Google, 4 by Meta.
— The 3 that aren't are TikTok, Telegram (!) and ChatGPT
— Telegram has more users than Spotify, Pinterest, Netflix, Amazon, Snap!
— ChatGPT's one month retention is #5 after WA, Instagram, Chrome and Youtube. 2yrs ago, it was been #20 by M1 retention
— Shopee, a shopping app in southeast Asia, is huge and retains users better than Amazon!

Useful way to break down consumer businesses especially within certain categories (X vs Reddit vs Threads is a good one). It's shocking how few new apps have been able to break through in the past 10yrs.

[Chennai Updates @UpdatesChennai]

🚨Chennai Corporation could end up saving several crores per year as the TN Govt is finally looking at transparency!!
📸 : @TOIChennai

[Mani Vembu @MVhandle]

Sad.

Safe driving begins when we stop assuming someone else will make up for our mistakes in the road.

[Sachin Gupta @Sachingupta]

दिल्ली–देहरादून एक्सप्रेस वे पर सहारनपुर (यूपी) में रोड एक्सीडेंट में 3 लोगों की मौत हो गई। Tiago कार बैक हो रही थी, तभी स्कॉर्पियो की टक्कर लग गई।
@AmitGup96968797

[Sridhar Vembu @svembu]

American Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, in a major speech, spells out what we in India would call their own "Swadeshi economic policy".

The first principle he states: "The first is that economic security begins with national capacity… The nation that depends on its adversaries for critical inputs is not truly sovereign. And the nation that reduces its economics to consumption is not truly prosperous."

Powerful words. I agree with him and India must resolutely apply the same principles. East Asian nations are all strongly Swadeshi too.

I am proud to be closely associated with the Swadeshi Jagran Manch, and SJM has long advocated similar principles, for over 3 decades now.