Misconceptions about Zoom being Chinese disheartening, says top exec Sankarlingam

Video conferencing platform Zoom has denied allegations of its Chinese origins, at a time when anti-China sentiments run rife in one of its key markets, India. 

Velchamy Sankarlingam, president of engineering and products at the company, said in a blog post: “Some of the misconceptions are disheartening, especially those about Zoom and China. Zoom has been clear about its identity: Zoom is a US company, founded and headquartered in San Jose, California.”   

Sankarlingam joined the company a month ago. 

Watch: What are some of the alternatives to foreign based video conferencing applications?  

There have been similar allegations against the company earlier too. A few months ago, the NASDAQ-listed firm faced allegations that some calls made on its platform were routed through China. In response, on June 18, the company’s CEO Eric Yuan wrote in a blog post that Zoom was a global multinational company, which also had operations and employees in China.

“Among our 17 global co-located data centres, we have one co-located data centre in China. This data centre is in its facilities run by a leading Australian company and is geofenced. Its design ensures meeting data of users outside of mainland China stays outside of mainland China,” he said at the time.

Additionally, Sankarlingam said in his blog post that Zoom would work with large multinational brands; micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs); and startups in India.

“We look forward to engaging with more stakeholders in India in the coming months to support key priorities such as Digital India, StartUp India and Skills India, as well as introducing them to Zoom,” he said.

The move comes at a time when prime minister Narendra Modi launched the Aatmanirbhar Bharat App Innovation Challenge to promote existing Indian apps and encourage companies to create new alternatives to foreign apps. The government also offered to help companies with ideation, incubation, prototyping and market access to develop the new apps.