Zoho Boss’ New Adventure: Sridhar Vembu Unveils Power Tools Venture Karuvi

SaaS unicorn Zoho’s cofounder and CEO Sridhar Vembu on Wednesday (April 10) announced the launch of his new venture Karuvi, a power tools manufacturing company.

As per its website, Karuvi is a Chennai-based mechatronics startup that designs and builds consumer and industrial power tools and other mechanical systems. The name of the startup draws its inspiration from the Tamil word for instrument or tool. 

“Being crazy, we… set up a small engineering team. That was almost 2 years ago. A lot of designs and redesigns later, we have a suite of tools ready to start commercial production. The brand name is Karuvi (கருவி) the Tamil word for instrument or tool,” said Vembu in a post on X.

Vembu also said the company is building a factory to manufacture these power tools in Tenkasi, the headquarters of Zoho. However, it was not immediately clear if Karuvi is directly linked to the SaaS giant or it is a separate entity. 

Karuvi currently offers products such as angle grinders, corded and cordless drills, rotary hammers, saws, among other power tools. Additionally, Karuvi’s website also includes separate product sections about batteries, hand tools and accessories. However, no products are listed under these sections currently. 

The company will likely take the offline route to sell its products to the end users. 

“We aim to build a slew of machine tools that are precise and equipped with the latest advances in motor technology, material science and electronics… We are establishing a strong network of professionals and authorised dealers who share our vision of the tech-enabled power tool industry,” the company’s website says.

Detailing the genesis of the startup, Vembu said that Karuvi was conceptualised after Abdul Gafoor, founder of a UAE-based home appliances company Mr Light Global urged him to manufacture hand held tools. 

“He (the UAE-based founder) told me he wanted Zoho to make these products and he would love to distribute them. I said we know nothing about it. He said this could create rural jobs. That is how he hooked me!” Vembu said in the post. 

In response to a comment on the post, he said that the new startup started off with two engineers and currently boasts a headcount of 10 employees. 

Vembu said that the new venture has so far entailed costs related to prototyping and tooling. He added that the company will also have to bear other costs in the future such as those related to factory space, machinery, workforce, marketing, distribution and consumer support.

When a user estimated the cost entailed by the new venture to be around INR 1 Cr, Vembu projected the expenses to be “double” of this number. 

“Double all the numbers and you would be closer! With new product development in unfamiliar territory, there is a steep learning curve – the “design and redesign” that is unavoidable,” he said. 

Notably, the launch of Karuvi comes at a time when Zoho has been on a spree of launching new entities and products. In February, the SaaS giant unveiled a new business division called Zakya in India to cater to retail businesses. 

Last year, it also introduced two new offerings – privacy-focussed Browser ‘Ulaa’ and Zoho Practice, a free end-to-end practice management solution tailored for chartered accountants (CAs).

While Zoho has largely experimented with the enterprise tech realm so far, Karuvi will be its first major experiment in a completely foreign market. 

The new launch also comes at a time when the company is witnessing an upswing in its business. Zoho reported an operating revenue of INR 8,703.6 Cr ($1 Bn) in the financial year 2022-23 (FY23), a jump of 30% from INR 6,710.7 Cr in FY22. The Chennai-based company’s net profit, however, rose a meagre 3% year-on-year to INR 2,836 Cr in FY23.

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