We will see in 2030: As Airtable lays off employees, Sridhar Vembu says Zoho is facing pressure

Zoho chief Sridhar Vembu has admitted that the company is facing pressure amid rising costs. Yet, Vembu claims that the homegrown SaaS firm will not cut jobs. After rival firm Airtable announced plans to cut a large number of jobs, the Zoho founder insisted that AI should not be a reason to fire workers.Sridhar Vembu shared a post from Federico Simionato, product leader at Airtable’s owner, Bending Spoons, on X. Simionato had announced that Airtable was cutting jobs. “Today we’re laying off a large part of the Airtable team,” he said. “This is not a reflection of their work but a reflection of our deep belief that small teams ship more and better.”Vembu claimed that companies deciding to fire workers and move to smaller teams was not unusual in SaaS. But it was not something that Zoho planned to do. “This is normal in SaaS. This is what we have refused to do,” the Zoho chief said. Sridhar Vembu wrote on X. Airtable is a spreadsheet and database app. It was acquired by Bending Spoons for $1.28 billion in August this year. Though it is unclear how many employees are impacted by this decision. Retrain employees for AI, don’t do layoffsSridhar Vembu insisted that Zoho was not going to fire workers because of how good AI was getting. Instead, the homegrown SaaS company wanted employees to learn new skills. “When AI productivity enables smaller teams, we retrain people to deploy on new products or helping customers better,” Vembu wrote.Just a couple of days ago, Sridhar Vembu had stated on X that the company was trying to avoid mass layoffs, despite mounting costs. At the time, Vembu also revealed that Zoho had cancelled appraisals for the year. “We have also told our employees that we cannot have our usual pay increase this year,” Sridhar Vembu said. The Zoho chief, once again, noted that the company was facing rising costs due to the AI boom. Despite this, Zoho was not going to take the same approach as other tech startups or companies that have conducted layoffs. “Our business is growing but there is a lot of pressure on the cost side (data centre and AI costs),” Vembu added. “We have chosen a different approach than VC-funded and public companies.”Sridhar Vembu claimed that the result of Zoho’s plan may only be visible by the end of this decade. “We will see in 2030,” he said. Previously, the Zoho founder has revealed that the company planned to “reinvent” itself for the AI age, something that may only show results within the next five years. The company has also not increased its employee count in the past 18 months and has made cuts in its marketing budget.Zoho is not the only company facing difficulties in the AI era. The tech industry as a whole has faced a big impact. Companies including Microsoft, Meta, Oracle, and TCS, have fired thousands of workers in the past few months. In 2026 alone, over 1,31,000 tech employees have lost their jobs as per layoff tracker Layoffs.fyi. Netflix is the latest major firm to cut jobs, with about 1,000 employees getting the axe.- Ends