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.