Sridhar Vembu doubles down on East India Company comparison for Big Tech, says ‘bigger than most sovereign nations’
Sridhar Vembu, co-founder of Zoho Corporation, doubled down on his comparison of Big Tech to the former British East India Company (EIC), noting the power and attractiveness of the block when it comes to attracting finance and creating value.
Just a few weeks after first making the analogy, Vembu, who is also the software firm’s Chief Scientist, noted that these capital-intensive and ambitious companies are “larger than most sovereign nations.”
Is big tech the new ‘East India Company’? Sridhar Vembu thinks so…
“Big tech is bigger than most sovereign nations. The way to think of them is the ‘East India Company,'” Vembu wrote on social media platform X (formerly known as Twitter) on February 14.
He was responding to a post comparing the latest round of financing, in which Google parent company Alphabet raised $32 billion in debt in 24 hours (compared to the 100 days it might take for the Indian government to raise a similar amount) and its 100-year bond issue with India’s 40-year bonds.
History is cyclical: Vembu says it’s ironic
He made similar statements in January, sharing his views on France’s decision to switch from American video meeting platforms (Zoom and Microsoft Teams) to Visio, a local alternative. Vembu called for “technology sovereignty” and encouraged countries to take more control over their digital infrastructure.
In a Jan. 27 post on
The conclusion from the technology leader’s statements is that, like the East India company, which had great power and influence over the economy, markets and trade in Britain’s colonies in Asia, it is the Big Tech experts who play a similar role globally today.
How did netizens react? ‘Not bad, same grandchildren, right mental model…’
Reactions to Vembu’s latest post on the subject were mixed; While some users accept the comparison, others think there are obvious differences, and some note that the change is only in name; The beneficiaries then and now remain the same.
“Big tech’s revenues exceed 75% of countries’ GDP. It’s not just scale. It’s private power rivaling sovereign states. East India Company is the right mental model,” one user wrote.
Another agrees: “But it goes deeper than scaling. EIC controls trade routes, big tech controls data routes. Running business infrastructure in 3 countries and every cloud pricing change or API deprecation confuses you, dependency is invisible until conditions change.”
One user felt the two were not comparable, stating: “The East India Company had a zero-sum mentality. That’s why it was an exploitative, evil company. Big Tech believes in the positive sum philosophy and is actually committed to solving hard problems. They will have a net positive impact on the world.”
Another user stated that although the names have changed, the people benefiting from this are the same. “Descendants of the EIC’s majority shareholders have now become majority shareholders of nearly all U.S. corporations,” they wrote.
Some also made ironic and funny comments like “West India Company. H1B supported.”
