“Meeting bombing is an end-user behaviour pattern”

COVID-19 crisis has turned out to be a game-changer for many companies. While some companies have seen their business model tumble, few others, including the collaboration and communication solution and service providers have seen their numbers swelling. The one that leads the pack is Zoom, whose number of average per day users grew from 10 million in December 2019 to 300 million by April 2020. This, despite some major security gaps and concern about some Zoom calls being routed through data centers in China. In a video-call with Shubhendu Parth, Zoom Video Communications India head Sameer Rajeev talks about the security issues, its 90-day plans to plug these, Keybase acquisition, and the Version 5.0.

Sameer Rajee

India Head, Zoom Video Communications

Shubhendu Parth (SP): Eric Yuan had earlier stated that Zoom was not geared to handle such a massive surge in user volume. What steps has the company since then taken to augment its capacity?

Sameer Raje (SR): I think it would be fair to say that nobody had really imagined that all of us would be working and socializing from home. So yes, it is absolutely true that we had not imagined that every second or third person in the world would start using Zoom or a virtual platform to socialize, or to meet and collaborate.

During this period, we have seen different kind of users coming on board—young kids and schools, and users who had never used collaboration platforms. These first-time users are bringing in our new use cases. I read an article that some marriages in India were happening on Zoom. We had not anticipated that Zoom would be a platform for people to get married. And then there are people hosting a get-together with family and friends. We did not anticipate this either.

So there are a few things to be done. One, we need to be absolutely sure that users coming on our collaboration platform are using it in the right way. For young, under 16 years’ users, it is important to enforce certain discipline and parental control. Hence, under-16 kids cannot sign up for a Zoom account without permission from the school or parents. Next, is the technical aspect to deal with where we need to ensure that there is no downtime in service.