Sridhar Vembu says India on same path as China, where birth rates have fallen to '250-year-old level'

Sridhar Vembu, billionaire co-founder of Zoho Corporation, took to social media to compare India with its neighbouring country, China, while discussing declining birth rates. He said this was one of the reasons he decided to move to rural parts of India, where he could be closer to people who are raising children.

Check full text of the post here:

China’s government announced on Monday (see screenshot below) that births in 2025 fell to 7.92 million, a staggering 1.62 million fewer than in 2024, and that the total fertility rate has dropped to 0.93.

Put differently, there were fewer births in China in 2025 than in 1776, the year the United States declared independence. This is shocking. India as a whole would have had about 22 million babies in 2025 and dropping. Tamil Nadu is experiencing a steeper decline in births than all of India. These trends are going to dominate how we view the world in the coming decades.

I moved to rural India to be able to live with people who are still having children. I consider being surrounded by children the blessing of my life.

Check his post here:

How did people react?

"Low birth rates don’t automatically mean decline. They mean the end of cheap labor, surplus workers, and consumption-driven GDP illusions. Countries that adapt with productivity, automation, and capital depth will do just fine. Those that don’t will struggle regardless of how many babies they have. What is rare now isn’t people. It’s meaning. Community. Multi-generation living. Children growing up around adults who actually know them. So while policymakers panic over fertility charts, the real edge may belong to societies that rebuild family, culture, and purpose at a human scale. Growth doesn’t only come from numbers. It comes from what you do with the people you already have. Being around children isn’t just sentimental. It’s a bet on resilience," said one user.

"Sir everyone knows the problem. What is the solution which you know 100% will work to increase Tamil population? Once it's reduced, it's over. It will get diluted in different ways. Tamil land is for the Tamils. One population reduces, slowly outsiders will take up land," said another user.