'We have to build extensive public transport to make our cities liveable': Zoho's Sridhar Vembu

Zoho co-founder and chief scientist Sridhar Vembu has called for urgent improvements in India’s public transport infrastructure, stating that cities in the country are far more dense than Singapore.

In a post on X (formerly Twitter), Vembu highlighted that Singapore, one of the world’s most advanced economies and among the most livable cities, relies heavily on public transport while also curbing private vehicle ownership through its Certificate of Entitlement (COE) system.

"Singapore also limits the number of private cars through the mechanism of open market trading of Certificate of Entitlement (COE) needed to own a car and the certificate costs more than Singapore $100K (and the car price is on top of that)," he wrote.

“Indian cities are far more dense than Singapore. We have to build extensive public transport to make our cities livable. It can be done,” Vembu added.

Vembu’s comments came in response to BJP leader Tejasvi Surya’s post on X, in which he criticized the Karnataka government’s Rs 18,500‑crore tunnel road project in Bengaluru, arguing that it is designed for a small percentage of private car owners rather than the broader population.

I want to add that Singapore, one of the most advanced economies in the world and one of the most livable cities, relies extensively on public transport. Singapore also limits the number of private cars through the mechanism of open market trading of Certificate of Entitlement… https://t.co/ob7WjOiybJ

— Sridhar Vembu (@svembu) July 15, 2025

Vembu’s post garnered more than 170,000 views, with many users taking to the comments section to share their opinions.

"Build cities and not buildings. It is so unfortunate that we do not have one such example of large city in entire country which is liveable. Sridhar ,Limiting number of cars like SG not practical as largest industry will be impacted but there should be enough incentive to builders to participate in creating public transport infrastructure under PPP model," a user wrote.

"Our last mile connectivity is really poor along with capacity for our population, hence the need for car. If air conditioned public transport with last mile connectivity is available, no one would use car. People don't like to spend time in traffic. Specially with our taxes on cars, mundane scrapping policies and the kind of roads we have," another noted.

India needs millions of zero emission buses but unfortunately public transport is left to the vagaries of State Transport Corporations which are in extremely poor financial shape . Unless there is clear budgetory support which comes from tolls on roads, we will not be able to…

— Dr. Sudhir Mehta (@sudhirmehtapune) July 16, 2025