Our access to user data is limited and temporary: Sameer Raje

Sameer Raje, General Manager and India Head of Zoom Video Communications said that Zoom is a collaboration platform and not a repository of information. Zoom does not store data as it goes away as soon as a meeting ends, he added.

Hyderabad:As the businesses came to a standstill during the Covid-19 induced lockdowns in last March, video conferencing platforms came to the rescue of entrepreneurs to provide business continuity. Zoom is one of such platforms that became popular during the pandemic and was most sought after by the employees and employers.

To know more about the journey of Zoom and the current issues related to data privacy and security, ETV Bharat spoke to Sameer Raje, General Manager and India Head, Zoom Video Communications.

Edited Excerpts:

Q. With the sudden imposition of lockdown, businesses used Zoom in a big way. As a result, there was an exponential rise in the number of users. Were you ready for that situation?

Since we were operating with a small team at the time of lockdown, I would say we were not really geared up for the sudden surge in number of users. To meet the growing demand, our team literally worked around 20 hours a day and tried to service as many customers as possible.

Q. As the economy has moved from the lockdown to unlock phase, employees have started going to offices. Some companies started exploring hybrid models by extending work from home/work from anywhere options. Against this backdrop, how Zoom as a product will serve the future needs of businesses?

First of all, Zoom is not a product but a platform of collaboration and offers collaboration services. The video conferencing services is just one component of our total services. We can offer complete collaboration services for the largest of the enterprise to even a small and mid-scale organisation.

The most important thing happened during the lockdown phase was people who were not so comfortable in using video started using video communication platforms. It resulted in a quick transformation.

On the other hand, companies also started realising the benefits of using video collaboration services such as reduction in travel, increased productivity, reduction in costs of infrastructure, etc.

Having said that, we completely understand that we can’t take away human touch entirely. So, in my view, hybrid workforce model is the way forward.

Q. How has Zoom adopted to the user needs in the last nine months and what were your major learnings from technological as well as product point of view?

Zoom, which is predominantly built for enterprises, got users from small backgrounds such as teachers. Unlike big firms that have a dedicated IT staff to support employees, these new set of people don’t have a support system.

Having realised this void, we took upon ourselves to ensure certain features and best practices are in place to ensure teachers as well as small kids like ten to eleven years old can have a stress free experience.

In fact, we developed a lot of text and video content to help amateur users.

Q. Data privacy has been a major subject of debate in recent times. Zoom being a multinational company with Chinese origin founders, how you are going to address the concerns related to data privacy and security.

There are three layers to this whole discussion – data security, abiding by the Indian laws and our infrastructure in India.

As far as the law of the land is concerned, we completely abide by the rules and regulations that are in place in India.

With regard to data privacy and security, I would like to point out that Zoom is a collaboration platform and we are not a repository of information.

We have only a limited amount of data about a user. What we have is what a user gives us in terms of creation of user id, or for billing purposes. In fact, the data related to a meeting is transient and it goes away as soon as the meeting ends. We don’t store this data.

Talking about infrastructure, we have data centres in Mumbai as well as Hyderabad and as and when the need arises, we will expand our data centre footprint in India.

Q. With your vast experience in the digital ecosystem, do you have any suggestions for the upcoming Union Budget?

In my view, the next level of growth comes from rural and far flung areas. What my suggestion for the government is to focus on these areas to improve digital connectivity. This will help in extending the most essential health care services to women and children in these areas.

(In conversation with Shravan Nune)