We'll be investing, hiring heavily in India over 5 years: Zoom President

Velchamy Sankarlingam also addressed the issue of Zoom's origin and identity, which has often been wrongly mentioned as Chinese

India is an important market for Zoom, and the company is planning to invest and hire more talent in the country, Velchamy Sankarlingam, the videoconferencing app’s president of engineering and product, said in a blogpost on Medium.

Sankarlingam joined his new role on June 12, and in a post titled ‘Why I Joined Zoom and Our Commitment to India’, spoke at length about why India is a key market for Zoom and the company’s commitment towards building a great video communications product. 

“We also have plans for significant investment in the country over the next five years and beyond, including expanding our footprint and hiring more top talent in the region. India is and will continue to be an important market for Zoom, and we are excited to build on the exciting opportunities we see in the region,” he said in the post. He also addressed the issue of Zoom’s origin and identity, which has often been wrongly mentioned as Chinese.

In the wake of the recent ban on 59 new Chinese apps and Reliance launching a videoconferencing app called JioMeet, whose design is extremely similar to Zoom, there have been calls for banning the app in India. 

“Zoom is a US firm, publicly traded on the Nasdaq, founded and headquartered in San José, California. And like many global technology companies, Zoom has offices in China operated by subsidiaries of the US parent company,” said Sankarlingam in the post. Zoom’s presence in India is represented on the ground by an office in Mumbai, as well as two data centres (one in Mumbai and one in Hyderabad), he added.

Concerns around safety and security on Zoom had surfaced globally and in India in April, after the Ministry of Home Affairs and the Computer Emergency Response Team-Indian (CERT-In) issued advisories against the use of the platform. 

Zoom India Head Sameer Raje had told Business Standard at the time that the firm was speaking to the government to address and understand its concerns. The firm also plans to support programmes such as Digital India, Startup India, and Skill India, as well as introducing them to Zoom, Sankarlingam said in his post. 

The company began operations in India in September last year, with an aim to ramp up its teams here to serve its already sizeable customer base.  It also planned to hire more partners and channels, so as to meet India-specific demands. 

According to the data sourced from Sensor Tower, Zoom was the most downloaded app in India during the peak of the lockdown (between April 20 and May 20), with 20.9 million installs, after Aarogya Setu and TikTok. JioMeet, which launched in India about a week ago, has over 1 million installs on the Google Play Store.