Chennai: Zoom’s India operations are playing a crucial role in its bet on vertical, function-specific software application services, according to a senior executive. The US-based company is transitioning from a video conferencing tool to an office collaboration platform, aiming to execute work on its platform through an AI layer, workflow automations, and integrations. It wants to consolidate key business data and deliver agentic tasks in what it calls an AI-based ‘system of action.’ Zoom is also ramping up its function-specific, cloud-based contact center and sales support businesses.With the introduction of various integrations with enterprise application software providers, the platform can take real-world actions from meetings, this includes assigning action items to team members, notifying them via email, tracking progress, generating reports and creating slides, Velchamy Sankarlingam, president of product and engineering for Zoom, told TOI.“India is one of our most important growth markets and a key development hub hosting two capability centres in Bengaluru and Chennai,” he said, though he declined to share headcount specifics. “We are seeing significant momentum in the country. India is among the top-five markets for Zoom and it serves as a full-scale operational replica of the US, with teams across product development, sales, IT and security and finance functions,” he added.The Bengaluru hub serves as a central pillar for Zoom’s global service operations, DevOps and infrastructure management, while the Chennai hub builds core modules for the contact center and is purpose-built to capitalize on local engineering talent. Zoom’s pivot comes at a time when the platform is facing low top-line growth post-pandemic. Its revenue in the second quarter was $1,277 million, up 4.9% year over year, while APAC revenue grew 4%. “Our customer support, Zoom Phone and AI products are driving growth and AI adoption with conversation analytics, real-time coaching, paperwork handling and automation plays a crucial role. The AI integration goes beyond reducing traditional metrics like cost-per-ticket and time to resolution into identifying root causes and taking proactive actions,” Sankarlingam said. Beyond supporting major multinational firms operating in the region, Zoom is successfully penetrating the domestic Indian market, he added.Zoom is also the first multinational cloud provider to obtain a Department of Telecommunications (DoT) carrier license to operate Zoom Phone in India. The service is currently live in six telecom circles, and the company is adding three more, including Gujarat and Kolkata. Sankarlingam noted that Zoom is actively working with Indian regulators to lobby against the legacy, circle-by-circle physical infrastructure model, advocating instead for cloud-friendly regulatory standards.Amid the ongoing friction between AI model makers and software companies over enabling external AI models to pull data and talk to each other, Sankarlingam believes Zoom’s open-platform approach, such as supporting Model Context Protocol (MCP) and external AI connectors, is the right strategy. He views the relationship as collaborative and coexisting rather than combative. “For us, like, we are in the middle of all your conversations, and the data gets generated like every day... We are not threatened; we feel like there is going to be a coexistence,” he explained.
