Amidst the 21 day lockdown to curb the spread of COVID19, there have been a lot of developments in the outside world. For starters, work from home has become more digital than ever.
With the offices shut, most of the companies have instructed their employees to continue their official work but from home. From writing reports to take con calls, almost everything can be done thanks to the technological advancements.
With that being said, one app that not many would have heard about earlier is doing pretty well. Zoom, a video conferencing app, has seen a drastic surge of users in the past couple of days. The app is being used for business conferences and to teach school children remotely.
Founded by Eric Yuan, a Chinese engineer who migrated to the US in 1997. Yuan joined WebEx, an online meeting platform, acquired by Cisco in 2007. He was head of engineering but when he quit in 2011 customers were unhappy because improvements had come to a standstill. When he started Zoom, few gave him a chance.
When Zoom listed on NASDAQ in April last year, Yuan’s 20 percent share was worth $3 billion. Since COVID-19 hit the scene, Zoom’s valuation has surged to $42 billion. And Yuan is one among a few billionaires whose worth has shot up in the carnage of 2020.
Apart from being used for work, the app is also being used for online social gatherings, yoga classes, book clubs, and entertainment concerts.
On Monday, Zoom surged to become the No. 1 app in India on Google Playstore as the 9-year-old platform has emerged as the go-to service for official meetings and informal gatherings.
According to Apptopia, which monitors app downloads, the daily downloads for Zoom have increased from around 1,70,000 in the middle of February to nearly 2.5 million in late March. Not just Zoom, other apps such as Tencent Conference, WeChat Work, Microsoft Teams and Slack have also seen a significant increase in downloads since the onset of coronavirus globally.
