Billion Dollar Unicorns: Will Zoom Go Public Or Get Acquired?

According to a MarketsandMarkets report, the enterprise video market is forecast to grow at a CAGR of 20.1% from $16.34 billion in 2017 to $40.84 billion by 2022, primarily driven by the rising demand for video as a tool to enhance communication and collaboration across enterprises and the rising adoption of cloud technology. Zoom Video Communications is a Billion Dollar Unicorn that is reporting growth rates of 150%.

Zoom Video Communications’ Financials and Offerings

San Jose, California-based Zoom Video Communications was founded in 2011 by CEO Eric Yuan. He was one of the founding engineers at WebEx Communications, which was acquired for $3.2 billion by Cisco in 2007. He stayed on as the Corporate Vice President of Engineering at Cisco. In 2011, however, he quit Cisco to start his own company and create a new video service on top of modern cloud architecture.

Zoom unifies cloud video conferencing, simple online meetings, group messaging, and a software-defined conference room solution into one easy-to-use platform. It offers meeting solutions in a freemium model. It offers the free basic plan for one-to-one meetings of up to 40 minutes and charges between $14 and $20 per month for premium plans targeting small teams, medium, and large enterprises. It also offers software-based conference room solutions for $49 per month.

Tech companies are a top market for Zoom, but it also works with 90% of the top 200 universities. Its customer base includes over 700,000 businesses and 6,900 educational institutions.

It has recently announced augmented reality features that can be used to enhance online teaching. It recently announced that its AI-driven automated platform Zoom.ai has been integrated with Microsoft Teams and Office 365. Zoom.ai helps employees offload and automate everyday tasks including searching for files, scheduling meetings, generating documents and transcripts.

Zoom does not disclose the details of its financials, but it has disclosed that its revenue grew 150% in 2017. In 2016, it had reported 300% revenue growth. It was profitable in the third quarter of 2016.