The high-profile divorce battle involving Zoho founder Sridhar Vembu has once again come into focus after a report claimed that a US court directed the billionaire entrepreneur to post a bond worth $1.7 billion (around Rs 15,278 crore). While Vembu’s lawyer has clarified that the order is currently under appeal, the development has brought renewed attention to the personal life of the Zoho founder and his US-based wife, Pramila Srinivasan, whom he was married to for nearly three decades.
Srinivasan has made a series of serious allegations against Vembu in court, including claims that he abandoned their autistic son and transferred ownership of Zoho assets without her consent. The couple separated before Vembu moved to India in 2019.
An academician and entrepreneur, Srinivasan is a recognised name in the US healthcare technology space. Now 58, she holds a PhD in electrical and computer engineering from Purdue University and was born and raised in New York. She married Vembu in 1993, four years after he moved to the US to pursue his PhD at Princeton University.
A bitter divorce dispute
Vembu began his professional career at Qualcomm, and the couple lived in California for close to 30 years. They have a 26-year-old son who has been diagnosed with autism.
In 1996, Vembu co-founded a software company called AdventNet along with his brothers and close associate Tony Thomas. The company was later rebranded as Zoho Corporation in 2009. According to filings, differences over the ownership and control of Zoho’s assets are believed to have played a key role in the breakdown of the marriage.
Vembu relocated from Silicon Valley to his native village of Mathalamparai in Tamil Nadu in 2019. A source close to Srinivasan told Forbes that Vembu informed her over WhatsApp around November 2020 that he wanted a divorce, before formally filing papers in August 2021.
In her court submissions, Srinivasan alleged that Vembu left the US permanently in 2020, abandoning both her and their special-needs son. She also stated that she financially supported the family during the early years of their marriage.
One of the central issues in the case is Srinivasan’s claim that Vembu transferred Zoho’s intellectual property and shareholding to his siblings in India through a series of complex transactions, without her knowledge or approval. She has argued that the transfers violated California’s community property laws, which require assets acquired during a marriage to be divided equally in the event of a divorce, regardless of where those assets are located.
“My husband not only abandoned his son and me with special needs in 2020, but also made fictitious transfers of our most valuable community asset to his family members without paying any consideration and without my consent,” Srinivasan said in court filings.
Vembu, however, has strongly denied the allegations. In a detailed post on X in 2023, he dismissed claims that he had abandoned his wife and son.
“It is complete fiction to say I financially abandoned Pramila and my son. They enjoy a far richer life than I do. I have supported them fully, my US salary for the past three years has been with her, and I gave our house to her. Her foundation is also supported by Zoho,” Vembu wrote.
Who is Pramila Srinivasan?
Srinivasan currently lives with her son in the San Francisco Bay Area. In 2007, she founded MedicalMine, a healthcare technology firm focused on electronic health records and practice management systems.
She is also the founder of The Brain Foundation, a non-profit organisation that supports autism research, treatment and community outreach. According to the foundation’s website, Srinivasan oversees its daily operations and manages volunteers and programme participants.
The foundation states that its work is driven by her goal to advance medical research that could eventually lead to FDA-approved therapies for conditions associated with developmental and mental health disorders.
The reported $1.7 billion bond order followed an ex parte application filed by Srinivasan in November 2024. However, Vembu’s lawyer, Christopher C. Melcher, has said the January 2025 order is under appeal and described the allegations made against his client as “outrageously false”.
The divorce case has seen multiple legal twists over the years and continues to remain under scrutiny.