Zoom may take legal action against Reliance Jio’s video conferencing service JioMeet which was launched last week. Sameer Raje, India Head Zoom Communications, said that he was shocked at the resemblance between the two apps and that there were a lot of discussions going on internally, a report by ET stated. Although Raje did not comment on a lawsuit against JioMeet, he said that he would leave it on the legal team to take the matter further. “We knew it was coming. It’s fine, it is not the first time Zoom has faced competition. Our strength has been our products and technology, and our focus is on customers. What our competitors do is it their strategy,” Raje told ET. He further highlighted the similarities between Zoom and the JioMeet app. He said, “What our competitors do is their strategy. In my all-hands meet, I told my team, that it doesn’t matter how an individual or a corporate reacts to what the competition is doing.” With the pandemic taking reigns in the country, many people resorted to video conferencing apps. One of the most downloaded apps was certainly Zoom. Raje also said that Zoom’s team was in touch with Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) and the Ministry of Home Affairs. He confirmed that the technical information about Zoom’s data centres was being discussed. “We are not sharing data, we are sharing technicalities of our platform, how it operates,” he said. The Indian government banned 59 Chinese apps last week in the backdrop of the Galwan valley clash between India and China when 20 Indian soldiers lost their lives. After the ban on Chinese apps, many homegrown apps jumped into the fray with skyrocketing downloads. JioMeet recorded 1 million downloads within a week of its launch. The anti-China sentiment left many Indian users speculating if the Zoom was a Chinese app. Zoom wrote a statement on Twitter clarifying that it is not a Chinese app. “We do recognize that as we continue to introduce ourselves to the Indian market, there has been some confusion about the facts as it relates to Zoom. Zoom is a U.S. company, publicly traded on the NASDAQ, founded and headquartered in San Jose, California,” Zoom wrote in a Tweet. Sameer Raje too confirmed the concerns among people with regards to the origin of the app. He said that people feel Zoom is of Chinese origin and that the data is shared with neighbouring countries. “We are an American company and we do not share data with any government. We have two data centers in India, people tend to forget that,” Raje said.
Zoom may take legal action against JioMeet for copying UI !!
