New Delhi, Oct. 14 -- Sridhar Vembu, founder of software giant Zoho Corporation, is taking a cautious approach amid an uncertain business outlook and rising artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure costs. The company has put its annual salary hikes on hold and cut back on marketing expenditure.

A pioneer in bootstrapped, capital-efficient B2B SaaS (Software-as-a-Service), Vembu said, "We have cut down on our marketing budget. We have also told our employees that we cannot have our usual pay increase this year. I have apologised for not being able to avoid this."

Citing the reasons behind the move, Vembu said, "The business outlook for software is uncertain and AI has raised costs dramatically with a) massive 4-fold increase in server...