Devina Sengupta that although “shocked”, Jio Meet is just another competitor. Raje also allayed fears of data security, saying the team is regularly in touch with Indian government over security details. Edited excerpts:
Zoom reiterated to its India market that it is a US headquartered firm and not a Chinese one. Was it done because you were afraid customers would stop downloading the app in the midst of the clash with China & data privacy concerns?
It is not a question of being worried, but it is a question of putting the truth out there because we believe that there is a lot of misinformation. People feel that Zoom is of Chinese origin and that we share data with the neighboring country, etc. We are an American company and we do not share data with any government. We have two data centers in India, people tend to forget that.
What is the kind of information shared with the government?
Few weeks ago, there was a request from the government in China to prevent some meeting IDs. People need to understand what are facts. We don’t define what is lawful and unlawful. It is the government that defines and when we operate in any of the country, we need to follow the guidelines of the government. Unfortunately for us, the request came from China and we didn’t have the technology to block only the China-based users and were forced to temporarily suspend the entire ID. We accept it was wrong. But had it been some other country, it probably would not have been looked at in that manner.
Have you been meeting the Indian government over the last few months in the wake of increased concerns over security and privacy and geo-political tensions with China ?
We met them in April, May and June, are in touch with MeitY and the Ministry of Home Affairs and have discussed relevant technical information and about our data centres. We work with law enforcement agencies and we have been sharing a lot of details with the Government of India. If there is any issue – with children using the platform and cybercrime going up by 600% – we work very closely with the law enforcement agencies also to help and bring offenders to book.
Privacy experts have red flagged the information sharing with the government. Your comments.
We are not sharing data, we are sharing technicalities of our platform, how it operates, security around the data centre, can someone intrude into the meetings, intercept data flowing on the network. We collect user names, log in credentials and IP addresses and that can be used to trace offenders. If there is a legitimate request from the law enforcement agencies, we have to provide. Government does not say share what happened in a meeting because we do not store that data and it is anyhow encrypted. So, data is absolutely secure.
What was your reaction when JioMeet was launched? And it was all over social media that JioMeet appeared to be very similar to the Zoom app.
The reaction was – Really? We knew it was happening, we knew it was coming. It’s fine, it is not the first time that Zoom has faced competition. Our strength has been our products and technology and focus on customers. What our competitors do is their strategy. We don’t want to comment on it. In my all hands meeting, I told my team, it doesn’t matter how an individual or a corporate reacts to what the competition is doing. What we have is ability to perform at the poorest of the poor bandwidth.
Were you shocked?
Yes.
Will there be a lawsuit against JioMeet?
We have a lot of discussions internally and I would not like to comment on this because it is a matter for my legal team to look into it and I will leave it for them.
India Inc’s working style and the education sector has changed with Covid-19. How has Zoom performed during lockdown and when the backlash against Chinese products and apps happened?
During Covid-19, usage had spiked at all-time high and we were the most downloaded app, according to studies. But these numbers fluctuate and even those who thought they will not need Zoom after lockdown was removed, realised they cannot travel beyond certain points, so they need Zoom. But we haven’t seen a massive amount of downturn because of any China angle. But yes, if you look at the peak of code time and versus now, it has declined because obviously those many users have already come on board and there was a spike and now it has stabilized.