On a 625-km bus ride from Chennai to Tenkasi, a good 12 hours from Tamil Nadu’s east to west coast, scenes from Swades keep playing in my head. The 2004 Bollywood blockbuster could well be the life of the man I am making this journey to meet.
Like the film’s lead, Shah Rukh Khan, Sridhar Vembu, the poster boy in India’s software-as-a-solution (SaaS) ecosystem, shunned his comfortable life in the US to settle down in a village that barely has motorable roads.
It is not an easy drive to the Zoho Corporation founder’s home. His farm is in a village called Govindaperi, which is another 40-minute drive from the main city of Tenkasi. Tenkasi, incidentally, is known for its waterfalls in Courtallam, a panchayat town described as the “spa of South India”.
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