Zoom to set up shop in Bengaluru to attend to growing India user base

Bengaluru: Zoom Video Communications on Tuesday said it will set up a new technology centre here and hire key talent over the next few years to expand its presence in India.

The company said in a statement the new office in India would help it manage its vastly growing number of Indian users. “From January to April 2020, Zoom has seen 6,700 per cent growth in free user sign ups in India,” the statement read.

The company said it already has an office as well as two data centres in Mumbai and that its expansion into Bengaluru will supplement its existing research and development centres and support the engineering leadership, which is based at its San Jose, California headquarters.

The company said it would immediately begin recruiting DevOps (software development and IT operations) engineers, as well as security and business operations personnel in Bengaluru. The employees will work from home until the COVID-19 situation has improved.

“India is a strategically important country for Zoom and we expect to see continued growth and investment here,” Zoom CEO Eric S Yuan said. “We are proud to provide our services for free to over 2,300 educational institutions in India during the COVID-19 pandemic and look forward to continuing to work with the people and government of India hand-in-hand.”

He added, “We plan to hire key employees for the technology centre over the next few years, pulling from India’s highly-educated engineering talent pool.

Zoom’s President of Product and Engineering Velchamy Sankarlingam said, “The Bengaluru centre will be an innovation hub for our communications platform.”