HCL, Zoho and other IT Firms Compete with Zoom, set to Develop New Products! Details

IT companies such as HCL Technologies, Cloud services firm Zoho and PeopleLink are among ten companies selected by the Indian government to make video conferencing solution in India. The government selected these companies in the first round. 

These companies will now be developing a prototype for the solution that will aim to replace Zoom and will be in par with global competitors. These companies will be given a grant of f ₹5 lakh each to build the prototype according to Economic Times’ report. 

In the second round, out of the ten, three companies will be asked to build the complete solution under the among of ₹20 lakh each. The company that wins, will be creating the solution for both the central and state government. 

“Aria Telecom, CyberHorizon Corp, Darsh, Instrive Softlabs, PeopleLink Unified Communications and Data Ingenious are among the other shortlists as per a list reviewed by ET. Jaipur's Data Ingenious has been credited with creating the first linguistic email access and instant messenger solution in 19 languages including Cyrillic, Arabic, Thai, Mandarin, Korean along with 15 Indian languages,” Economic Times reported. 

Ajay Data, chief of the Data group opined that India doesn't have many software products that can put up a fight with global products, despite being home to many service companies that are popular for its work. 

"There are many advantages of having an Indian VC product, one is that the solution can be in all Indian languages, and it can be locally hosted. This is important since when video is recorded say for legal purposes, it should be stored in India and the encryption key should also be available in India. This is not possible with foreign VC tools." Sarv Webs also from Jaipur, told the media.

The best solution will be reportedly used by government of India and respective state governments for a period of four years and they will be given ₹1 crore in the first year and an additional ₹10 lakh per year for three years after the first year for operations and maintenance of the solution for the government.