TENKASI: Zoho founder and CEO Sridhar Vembu said on Monday that he and two other people have written to the government in an open letter pushing for an AI policy, arguing that the technology requires a legislative framework due to its rapid advancements. The advancements achieved by AI-powered conversational platforms like ChatGPT, while helpful to society as a whole, could result in the loss of programming employment, according to him. He called on businesspeople, the government, and academics to work together to address this. For AI, he declared, “something akin to an ONDC (Open Network for Digital Commerce) must happen.”
In Tenkasi, Vembu was describing his ambitions for expanding his rural programmes to media.
He declined to share the identities of the other signatories when speaking to TOI on the sidelines, but he did assert that for advanced technology to be developed in India, the nation must take the initiative and stop being only a consumer.
“We are requesting a regulatory structure that would require transparency from all participants in this market. That’s fair, right? Follow our standards in order to conduct business here,” he remarked. He continued, “These regulations should also be established in broad cooperation with industry and academia. The objective was not to exclude any global actors.”
In the upcoming months, Zoho expects to open further offices in the Tamil Nadu districts of Tirunelveli and Madurai, as well as one in Uttar Pradesh, after opening two rural hub offices in Tirupur and Trichy in the previous six months.
The organisation currently has 30 spoke offices around India and five hub offices, including ones in Chennai, Tenkasi, and Renigunta. Out of the over 2,000 people operating out of Zoho’s hub and speak offices in Tier 2/3 towns and villages, about 1,000 were employed locally.
The learning centre Kalaivani Kalvi Maiyam, which Originally created during the Covid-19 pandemic to educate children from villages near Tenkasi, is also being expanded. In the KKM plant in Tenkasi, a 75,000 square foot facility is now being built.
130 pupils from nearby communities are enrolled in KMM’s elementary, middle, and high schools, along with 19 full-time and 5 part-time teachers. Work has already begun on the opening of a second KKM location, according to Vembu.
