Zoom bets on telemedicine push to grow user base

Zoom, the videoconferencing app, is betting on a major shift to telemedicine in India in the post-Covid-19 era to expand its base of paid customers as the company looks to derive a large chunk of its business from the healthcare vertical, Ron Emerson, global head of healthcare at Zoom, said in an exclusive interview with ET.The transition to telemedicine was evident in India and globally, with the share of outpatient consultations over video and voice platforms touching almost 90% during the peak of the pandemic from 3% before the Covid-19 outbreak.“There have been shifts in healthcare globally. This is not just about patients seeing doctors over a video platform, but it is also about what is being done in the front end,” said Emerson. The global telemedicine business, which was estimated at $21 billion, is expected to reach $123 billion by 2030, with India’s share likely to be about Rs 320 crore, according to a report by consultancy firm KPMG.Zoom, which counts 300 million daily participants on its platform (active users are a separate parameter), wants a share of this revenue pie. It hopes to make its platform a bridging tool between doctors — 80% of whom are based in urban areas — and patients in rural India, where almost 65% of India’s population lives.The company’s total revenue rose more than four-fold to $2.65 billion in the fiscal year 2021 from a year earlier. One of Zoom’s biggest revenue pushes came from its education vertical as schools and universities switched to online learning in the pandemic.“Zoom is focused on several things. It is a cost-effective collaborative platform and meets regulatory compliance from the security perspective. The other thing is how Zoom has helped in education – the same model can be used in healthcare, on how you can help clinicians to keep up with the highest standard of medical education,” Emerson said.Zoom expects a hybrid model to set in at the workplace, with work from home to remain the new normal. In the Indian perspective, Zoom’s other challenge is to make users take up its paid subscription. The current free-user option offers 45 minutes of time per session, but for $50 (Rs 3,650) per month, users get the premium service.“We feel as technology becomes crucial for healthcare organisations, at some point of time they will pay an extra amount of money to offer better services to their patients. This is especially true in the private healthcare system, where hospitals and doctors would want to differentiate themselves from their competitors,” Emerson said.

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