Zoom Clears The Air On Being American Amid Chinese App Ban

Zoom app was founded in 2012 with its headquarters in California, incorporated in Delaware.

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

(Photo: Aroop Mishra/The Quint)

A sense of fear has enveloped a lot of applications in India after 59 Chinese apps were banned in the country on 30 June. Apps like Zoom that have been under the scanner for having security problems and are being perceived as Chinese. There is a fear that the app might also get banned.

To clear the air on its origin, Zoom recently issued a statement saying that the company hails from the United States, is “traded on the NASDAQ, founded and headquartered in San Jose, California".

Origin of Zoom

Zoom’s founder Eric-Yuan, a Chinese-American immigrant, has just clarified that the app is American. He did say that the company has operations in China like many other multinational technology companies.

The app was founded in 2012 with its headquarters in California, incorporated in Delaware.

Yuan also said that he had moved to US back in 1997 and gained American citizenship in 2007.

Zoom’s Commitment to India

Velchamy Sankarlingam, the President of Product and Engineering for Zoom in India has spoken about the company's vision for the Indian market and how it plans to rope in stakeholders to lend its support for initiatives like Digital India, StartUp India and Skills India.

It also plans to invest in the country over the next five years and beyond, including expanding its footprint and hiring more people in the country.

Security Issues?

The Ministry of Home Affairs has warned users from using Zoom as it deems the app “not safe”.

Earlier, the Supreme Court had issued notice to the central government on a public interest litigation (PIL) asking for a ban on video-conferencing app Zoom, on the basis of privacy and cyber-security concerns.

Since then, Zoom has been working on making its entire platform end-to-end encrypted for both video and audio.

The app has more than 100 downloads worldwide and is a common tool used by most people working from home.

What’s The Other Option?

Jio has launched a video chat app of its own for Android, iOS and Windows which offers unlimited HD video calls for free.

The fact that Zoom only allows users to chat for 40 minutes for free gives JioMeet the upper edge.

There are also other video chat apps in the market like Google Duo, Skype, FaceTime and more.