He has a PhD in Electrical Engineering from Princeton University and worked for Qualcomm as a wireless engineer.

Then he started a company called AdventNet which created network management software. They had a product called ManageEngine, before starting Zoho.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sridhar_Vembu

>In 1996, Vembu, along with two of his brothers, founded a software development house for network equipment providers called AdventNet.[7][9]

So there is some connection to chips, at least, plus his educational background could incline him to be interested in this area.

They sell machine tools. The cordless one I have is VFM. https://www.karuvitech.com/products/copy-of-cordless-drill-k...

Yeah, that one.

No, I don't get it either. There's no synergy whatsoever.

More than 10 years ago, the "advertising company" Google started making chips called TPUs. So, what is your point exactly here? As an aside, there is a pretty big boom of semiconductor manufacturing in India (in the planning/commissioning stage) based on a government incentive program floated a few years ago where there's a 1:1 PLI matching scheme by the government (eg: $100M of spend will get you a $100M funding matched by the government). This has resulted in companies like Foxconn at one point deliberating [0] entering the semiconductor manufacturing space in India, besides other local high-market-cap companies like Vedanta and Reliance.

[0] https://edition.cnn.com/2023/07/11/tech/india-foxconn-exit-v...

Vembu has invested in fabless chip companies earlier.

He was looking at setting up a fab with a $700 million investment. I don’t know what that would have bought them.

I expect the thinking went:

build chip plant, ???, profit!