ZVC India, the Indian arm of US-headquartered communication platform company Zoom Video Communications, on Monday announced that it is setting up a technology centre in Chennai.

Velchamy Sankarlingam, President of Product and Engineering at Zoom said that the new Chennai technology centre is part of Zoom’s expansion plans and will supplement the existing technology center in Bengaluru, in addition to the two data centres in Mumbai and Hyderabad. The company also plans to gear up its hiring in India.

Speaking to BusinessLine Velchamy said, Like the technology centre in Bengaluru launched in 2020, the new Chennai technology centre will play a vital role as a source of innovation for Zoom. It will focus on research and development of new products including Zoom Contact Center and cutting-edge technologies to build a communications platform that will mimic real-life immersive experiences for users, as businesses around the world shift towards a hybrid format. The Chennai facility will be led by Zoom’s global engineering teams based at San Jose, California headquarters.

“We recognise and value the importance of India as a crucial part of Zoom’s growth strategy. With the addition of the Chennai technology centre, we strive to compete at the forefront of technological leadership and help raise the bar in the new era of collaboration,” said Sankarlingam. “As Zoom strengthens its ecosystem for future innovations, our expanded presence in India will play an important role in helping accelerate the translation of ideas and concepts into path-breaking solutions for worldwide impact. We welcome talents in India to be part of our growing DevOps, IT, Security, and Business Operations teams as we scale our operations.”

It maybe recalled that Zoom had tried to acquire Five9 a leading player in the cloud contact center business for $14.7 billion but the deal fell through on the question of valuation. Velchamy said the acquisition didn’t happen but our contact center development was ongoing and we already released it. But as you know that there is a lot of development that we need to get done and that is one of the reasons why we are expanding our R&D Center in Chennai.

Sameer Raje, General Manager and Head of India and SAARC Region of the company said, “Zoom is a preferred video platform for collaboration and connection used by millions of businesses and people around the world. Our focus on listening to our customers has helped us build a secure and reliable platform that addresses their requirements.” Recruitment for the Chennai technology centre is underway and expected to pick up pace said Raje. While not divulging the exact number of its employees in India, he said that it has a ‘few hundred employees working in the country.’

Upbeat on success

Even in a post-pandemic world, Zoom expects the current hybrid work model to continue and is offering additional products and services around its core video communication offering. The Zoom platform today has more than a thousand apps which users can integrate with its offerings. While competitors like Microsoft with Teams and Google with its Meet offerings try to elbow Zoom specially in the enterprise space, Velchamy sounds upbeat on its ability to not just take on but succeed against the behemoths.

The company which had set apart a $100 million fund to invest in start-ups is also collaborating with some Indian start-ups according to Raje but who did not disclose whether they had made any investments in India-based companies.

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