Zoom To Triple Workforce In India & Back Away From China: Report

Zoom has been the among most downloaded application on the Android App Store even since the lockdown.

Zoom has been called out for being vulnerable to cyber attacks.

(Photo: Aroop Mishra/The Quint)

Video conferencing app Zoom has announced that it will be tripling its existing workforce in India along with establishing new data centres in cities like Bengaluru and Hyderabad.

According to a CNN Business report, the company declined to share the exact number of people that it will be bringing on-board during the expansion of its operations in the financial capital of India, Mumbai.

Zooms expansion is a response to a spike in usage with the company saying that the free user sign-ups in India shot up by 6,700 percent between January and April 2020.

This move could also be due to the controversies the video conferencing platform has been involved in recently due to privacy concerns.

Zoom users in India have deep concerns about their data being off-shore which is why this move could help Zoom gain back some of that confidence people had on the platform before.

Also, Zoom’s longstanding ties with China are a cause for worry for some of its users who believe that the Chinese could be using these platforms to spy on them.

Since it has a sizable workforce in China with over 700 employees including its R&D department many have confused Zoom as a Chinese app.

The company had to release an official statement stating its origin from San Jose in California after the Indian government had banned 59 Chinese apps in India.

India is currently rethinking its technological ties with China after a recent clash between the two countries that led to the death of 20 Indian soldiers.

Zoom has had a meteoric rise ever since the coronavirus pandemic hit the globe. It recently overtook TikTik to be the most downloaded app on the App Store.

Overall, Zoom was downloaded 303 million times during Q2 on both App Store and Google Play Store.