Shailesh Davey

In the last 12 months, Shailesh Davey has led Zoho’s measured approach to artificial intelligence, expanding AI capabilities across the company’s software portfolio while resisting the industry’s rush towards expensive, large-scale AI deployments. 

With him at the helm, Zoho introduced Zia LLM, Zia Agents and a growing suite of proprietary AI technologies designed to keep customer data within Zoho’s ecosystem. Davey has been a long-standing advocate for building India’s technology ecosystem through indigenous innovation, privacy-first engineering, and deep-tech research. Under his tenure, Zoho has continued to invest in AI integrated directly into its enterprise software portfolio while pursuing a full-stack approach spanning hardware, software, cloud infrastructure, and AI. 

Davey believes the AI industry is entering a period of correction, where business value will replace hype as the defining measure of success. For him, true technological sovereignty extends beyond AI models to ownership of the entire technology stack—from silicon to software—while nurturing deep-tech talent across India’s hinterlands. He believes lasting competitive advantage will come from building sovereign technologies that prioritise trust, engineering excellence, and local innovation over dependence on external platforms.