Zoom Platform: bringing Collaboration, Connection, and Consolidation as one seamless experience

Zoom continues to enhance its AI-first work platform, while also evolving the Zoom Up Partner Program to unlock new opportunities and support partner-led business growth. A standout product line for the India market is the Zoom Phone and Zoom Contact Center.

Vishal Amin, Channel Head – India & SAARC Region, Zoom in a chat with VARINDIA recounts the impact that Zoom Phone's rollout across 6 telecom circles has while also sharing the opportunities that Zoom Contact Center creates for customers and partners -

Could you give us a brief about Zoom?

Zoom is a fourteen-year-old company as it was founded in 2011. In India, we are about a six and half year-old channel organization. Zoom initially started from meetings and then moved on to a lot of new, different products. We have just introduced Zoom Phone and Zoom Contact Center and have launched a new product called Zoom Workplace for Frontline. We continue to have our Zoom Workplace, which includes the Zoom Meetings, Zoom Chat, and Zoom Rooms. They are the frontrunners for Zoom across India and globally.

Zoom has broken up its platform into two parts - “Employee Experience” and “Customer Experience”. Employee Experience basically means when an employee walks into an office, we provide him everything from the front desk to their own desk— check-in, virtual check-in, hot desking, scheduling, meeting rooms, chat, and all of that. Under “Customer Experience,” we have Zoom Phone, Zoom Contact Center, Zoom Revenue Accelerator, and our entire Zoom Webinars, Sessions and Events platform.

What has been the impact of Zoom Phone's rollout across 6 telecom circles?

Zoom has expanded to six circles, which are Mumbai, Delhi NCR, Karnataka (Bengaluru), and Andhra Pradesh & Telangana (Hyderabad), Maharashtra, and Tamil Nadu. This has given us strategic coverage across all the metro cities, and predominantly where the technology hubs are present. We do have plans to go into additional circles as well, but those announcements will follow very soon.

Our vision is to make Zoom an AI-first company. Our AI products are across each and every product that we offer, whether it's the Zoom Meetings, Zoom Chat, Zoom Phone, or Zoom Contact Center. We are among the only players in the market that offer AI- first telephony across the entire platform.
 
How is Zoom leveraging Agentic AI to drive its next phase of innovation and growth?

We are an AI-first company. We believe in AI across the platform. So, having a unified experience for AI is what we offer. Our AI follows a federated approach. We work with just about anyone and everyone, and we do not use any customer data for our learning. That's the number one key differentiator that we have. Our AI, which is Zoom AI Companion comes to our partners and customers at zero cost. So, we don't charge for our Zoom AI Companion right now. If there is a need for customization, we do have a paid service, but everything else is free for AI right now.

What opportunities does the launch of Zoom Contact Center in India create for your customers and partners?

Zoom Contact Center is a true omnichannel solution in India and globally. When we say omni-channel, it’s a one of the few contact centers where you can elevate from a virtual chat to a live chat, a live chat to a phone call, and a phone call to a video call and all of this happens seamlessly.

From the Zoom Contact Center standpoint, we have launched BYOC in India already. We are looking at native, but that announcement will take some time. Again, Zoom Contact Center comes inbuilt with our entire AI suite as well which helps to collaborate, like from Zoom Chat all the way up to Zoom Video. It also helps deliver the Customer Experience that we really want.

How is the Zoom partner ecosystem evolving to support the company's new growth area?

At an APAC level, Zoom has about 2,000 + partners today. With the new Zoom Up 2.0 Partner Program, we have broken our program into metals—enrolled, Silver, Gold, and Platinum. In India, we have two partners who are Platinum - Aion Technologies and Gurusons. As partners, they have invested in learning the technology and building competencies with us. We have also announced three strategic partnerships with Avaya, Mitel, and Meta. Avaya and Mitel have officially announced that Zoom is their transitioning partner from on-prem to off-prem.

How friendly is your channel policy at Zoom Partner Program?

Zoom’s channel policy is very transparent and very approachable. We have got three flexible models, and partners can decide where they want to sit. We have the traditional, the Reselling, or the Referral motion. We have also launched the Certified Services program, where a partner can be certified by Zoom to go out and deploy our technology - whether it's Zoom spaces, Zoom Phone or Zoom Contact Center. The last one is Partner-Delivered Programs, where the partner comes onto our books, and we will use them as white- label services to go out and deliver Zoom services on Zoom's behalf. We have launched two new SPIFFs and rebates for our partners, predominantly for Zoom Phone and Zoom Contact Center. Last, but most importantly, globally we have probably the best NFR program for our partners, where we provide licenses for their own consumption and to demo our products as well.