Sridhar Vembu Says AI Is Helping Zoho Engineers Deliver Weeks Of Work In Just One Day

Zoho

co-founder Sridhar Vembu has shared how artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly transforming software development inside the company, helping engineers complete weeks of work in a single day. In a detailed post on Elon Musk-owned social media platform X, Vembu said AI has become a powerful accelerator for Zoho’s engineering teams, speeding up coding, design and implementation processes that earlier took significantly more time.

According to him, engineers are encouraged to use AI responsibly with a clear reminder that they must review, approve and take full ownership of the final code. "We use AI coding tools across the company - with the caution to engineers that they have to review and approve all the code and take responsibility for it. We don't force feed or mandate AI tools, and leave the decision on how best to use AI to experienced engineers," he wrote on X.Vembu shared a real-world example from one of Zoho’s most seasoned engineers -- someone with nearly 20 years of experience and currently working on complex UI performance tasks. The engineer reportedly told Vembu that AI has helped him ship features in a single day that would have earlier take three weeks.He explained that while AI handled large portions of the detailed coding, it still required him to provide the right structure and draw on his experience. The combination of human expertise and AI coding proved to be a major productivity leap.The impact, Vembu said, isn’t limited to senior developers. A junior engineer in the same team recently built an internal tool -- powered by AI -- that is now being used widely across other teams at Zoho. Vembu pointed out that the team member may not have been able to build the tool without the help of AI.Based on internal feedback, Vembu said there is strong optimism among Zoho’s engineering teams, especially for UI development, where AI is proving particularly effective in handling repetitive coding tasks while developers focus on structure, logic and performance.He also clarified that these observations are separate from his own ongoing AI research efforts and are purely based on the collective experience of Zoho engineers using AI tools in daily work.