After Zoho founder Sridhar Vembu, another entrepreneur, Deepan Shanmugasundaram, on Wednesday weighed in on the ongoing language debate, highlighting how language barriers affect business and trade. In a series of tweets, Shanmugasundaram pointed out that Tamil Nadu businesses often lose out because they lack Hindi-speaking professionals.
“One of my businesses is steel wholesale. Most of the Jain or Patel businesses in TN exist just because we can’t communicate with the north in Hindi and purchase goods from Raipur or Bhillai. They come, learn our language, and do distribution here in 1000s of crores,” he wrote on X.
Shanmugasundaram argued that English alone isn't always sufficient for conducting business across India. “We can’t do business in English with ease. E.g., last month I went to Odisha — there people speak Odia & Hindi (to some extent). English they understand, but you can see the discomfort in their face,” he said, adding that knowing multiple languages opens up opportunities.
Highlighting the difficulties of adult language learning, he noted, “I am struggling to find godown admins who can speak Hindi (so that they can manage loadmen from the north working with us). I am asking them to learn — but they can’t. Adult education is very hard.”
He also linked language proficiency to career opportunities, recalling how his lack of foreign language skills impacted his choices. “If I studied Japanese or Italian in school, my life would’ve been very much different now. I was into seismic engineering research. My peers went to universities in Italy & Japan for PhD. I hesitated because of language. I was naive then.”
On Tamil Nadu’s resistance to Hindi, he questioned the fears of language imposition. “Why afraid of Hindi!? We managed to safeguard our language this long. Why no more? As long as Tamilians are alive...Tamil will live. As long as we are prosperous...Tamil will thrive.” He suggested that instead of opposing Hindi entirely, the state government could focus on alternative foreign languages.
“TN government is the one who’s gonna implement the NEP. So, if they feel like Hindi is being imposed, let them say, ‘We won’t teach Hindi. We have a lot of Japanese companies here & Japan in future will have HR issues—so we will teach our kids Tamil + English + Japanese.’ Fine. Good. But for the sake of politics or ego or misunderstanding or whatever they shouldn’t stop this NEP."
The businessman said that on ground, real parents wish their kids learn more languages. "Many are feeling bad for not knowing Hindi. It’s better to get intelligence report and proceed with caution."
Shanmugasundaram's comments come amid heightened tensions over the language issue in Tamil Nadu. Zoho Corp founder Sridhar Vembu had earlier remarked that “not knowing Hindi is often a serious handicap” in business, while pro-Tamil activists blackened Hindi signboards at railway stations, escalating the row.