Chennai: Vembu Technologies, a software company focused on backup, disaster recovery, and cybersecurity solutions, targets more than $250 million in revenue, including $200 million in global business, over the next five years, as it scales and establishes itself as a larger, enterprise-focused player.The company, founded in 2002, initially focused on small businesses and later pivoted towards higher-complexity backup use cases across data centres, virtual machines, email, and databases.Sekar Vembu, founder and chief executive of Vembu Technologies, said efforts to move upmarket are gaining momentum, with success in key mid-market and large-enterprise deals in India. The company is transforming from a purely online-led into channel partnerships and direct engagement for very large accounts, he said. “We are stepping up our efforts for upmarket customers in India and overseas by building a channel-led approach and hiring business and leadership teams, investing in brand visibility and expanding our product for more complex environments,” he said.Currently smaller and medium businesses are about 80% of its customer base. Vembu said compliance-heavy and operationally complex environments focusing on large businesses offer better insulation from AI-related disruption in the software market, as he sees smaller business software becoming increasingly commoditised by AI.The company is bootstrapped and does not plan to raise money from external investors or access public markets. To support its next phase of expansion, Vembu has brought in around Rs 200 crore capital from personal and family investment. He said the capital will be used for aggressive expansion and brand visibility needed to instill confidence in large customers. Sekar, co-founder of AdventNet, the precursor to Zoho Corp, currently holds about 35% of the software service company. He, along with his sister Radha Vembu, co-founder and majority stakeholder in Zoho has invested in Vembu Technologies.Demand is being driven by rising cyberattack risks, the need for business continuity and faster recovery, and compliance requirements, including those under the Digital Personal Data Protection Act (DPDP Act), he said. Regulated sectors such as banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI) and healthcare form the company’s core customer base, along with retail, manufacturing and other industries.Sekar was speaking on the sidelines of the company’s outreach programme focused on the DPDP Act and how companies can manage data-protection compliance, recovery operations and business continuity during a cyber incident or outage.
