Zoho’s Sridhar Vembu calls Big Tech ‘East India Company’ as France replaces Zoom, Teams with domestic alternative

France has announced a plan to abandon American video meeting platforms such as Microsoft Teams and Zoom in favor of a domestically developed alternative.

The move sparked debate online, with Zoho co-founder Sridhar Vembu sharing his view on the issue and calling for ‘technology sovereignty’ as sovereign nations seek to gain greater control over their digital infrastructures.

In a post on

Vembu’s remarks came in response to another post highlighting France’s decision to phase out US-based platforms. The domestic platform, known as Visio, will be fully implemented in government institutions by 2027. Visio will handle the conference, with data hosted on French provider Outscale, and transcripts or subtitles managed by local firms.

What did Vembu say?

Commenting on the development, Vembu wrote: “The definition of ‘sovereign nation’ must now include technological sovereignty.”

“Big Tech is now the New East India company and Europeans are now waking up to this. History seems to rhyme with irony,” the former Zoho CEO said in his X post.

Vembu compares Big Tech to the East India Company and suggests that modern tech giants gain control over markets through dependence on data and infrastructure, similar to how the British and French once controlled India and other colonies, but he doesn’t say this directly.

Netizens support Indian alternatives

Vembu’s post went viral and received strong reactions from users and industry observers alike. Many users have asked Zoho to accelerate the development and rollout of its own privacy-focused tools.

Some of its followers questioned why Zoho didn’t promote Arattai and the rest of its suite of utilities more actively in India.

Responding to these questions, Vembu said, “We update Arattai weekly. We will take a big step when we reach a certain level of feature compatibility and differentiation.” He added that it could take at least 5-15 years to achieve full technology sovereignty, citing complex technologies such as EUV machines for semiconductors as an example.

Another user said: “Sovereignty in the 21st century isn’t just about borders and armies; it’s data, platforms and standards. It was always a strategic risk for Europe to rely entirely on foreign Big Tech. Tech colonialism looks different, but the power dynamics are familiar. History does rhyme.”