Zoom accessible by many people: Aparna Bawa, COO

No longer are C-suite executives of India’s multi-billion-dollar corporations' jet-setting around the country, as the pandemic has given a fillip to virtual meetings. This had prompted private jet operators in the country to label video conferencing platforms such as Zoom and Webex as the “new private jets” for CXOs. However, Zoom’s chief operating officer Aparna Bawa doesn’t concur.

“I don’t think we are as expensive as a private jet; more cost-efficient if you will,” quipps Bawa on the sidelines of a recent interaction with Fortune India. “We are much more accessible by everyone and that’s the beauty of Zoom,” says Bawa. “My mother-in-law, unbeknownst to me, signed up for Zoom, got her account and is having meetings with her friends, going to funerals and weddings (virtually),” Bawa says while emphasising the platform’s easy accessibility to people. “That’s what I love about this company. It’s so accessible by so many different people: sophisticated, non-sophisticated, young and old. Sometimes I even think that my kids know how to use it better than I do.”

Business executives—who make up about 70% of the private jet travel industry in the country—have slashed their travel by 90% as compared to their jet-setting days pre-Covid-19. “For example, if I had 10 customers who flew 500 hours with me, those 10 customers now are flying 50 hours because they are only travelling when there is a necessity,” says a senior executive of a private air charter company. In an earlier interview with Fortune India, Ronojoy Dutta, chief executive officer of InterGlobe Aviation, which owns IndiGo, had mentioned that the overall business travel market in India might have structurally “changed forever”. “People will rely more on Zoom calls and so forth,” he told.

The San Jose, California-based video teleconferencing company has seen its business globally companies took to virtual communication platforms to stay connected and conduct their business during a pandemic. For reference, in April 2020, Zoom had 300 million daily meeting participants worldwide, which at the end of 2019 stood at 10 million meeting participants. Over 500,000 companies conduct their daily corporate/ enterprise life on Zoom.

“We want to be the place where the knowledge worker spends their day — whether that’s in a meeting or virtual conference, and be able to take meetings from phones to desktops seamlessly,” says Bawa. Specific to India, she said, the company can deliver “very good” video and audio quality “in any WiFi situation”. And that, she adds, “is going to make a huge difference to the vast majority of Indians. It has made a difference, which is why we have such a big uptake in the region.”