Zoom

Concerns about the effects of the covid-19 pandemic and the likely economic damage have rattled global financial markets, aggravated by news of Trump's bungling in his efforts to contain the spread of this virus in the early stages of a pandemic, albeit his changing attitude later on. " You could call it inferno, an investor told a financial publication when asked about the bloodletting in global financial markets that also sent the Wall Street into a swivet.

Yet Eric Yuan, the CEO of Videoconferencing software company Zoom, is gleeful and sanguine about his company's prospects at a time when most companies and business leaders jib at talking about the effects of covid-19 on their business operations for fear of stoking panic. "People have been using our product at a record rate," Yuan told CNBC's Jim Cramer, who is also the co-founder of an online business publication called TheStreet.com.

The go-getting Eric Yuan has good reason to rhapsodize about his red-hot company, which went public last year in America. Caught up in the swirl of a global pandemic, most employees are reduced to working from home, using video-conferencing and telecommuting tools to get their work done instead. That's good news for tech upstarts like Zoom and Slack, which is a corporate-messaging service, since they sell higher-margin subscriptions to business customers, a business model that's in a nod to Oracle and SAP: Oracle and SAP offered bundled or customised products in the 90s when dotcom mania started to catch on, just like today's Salesforce, which provides customer-relationship management service. In other words, unlike mass production, their products can be customised or personalised to meet their clients' demands. And it helps that the advent of cloud computing or proliferation of cloud-based “software-as-a-service"(saas) provides tech upstarts like Zoom and Slack a chance to locate their target market as companies decide to pivot and scale up in order to adapt to changes.

The impending covid-19 pandemic also gives Zoom a perfect opportunity to expand its customer base, since people have no choice but to use video-conferencing and telecommuting tools to go about their business from home." its business is going great guns," said an analyst.

For all his optimism about his company's growth, there is still a burning issue facing Zoom and Eric Yuan. Which is how to turn active users into paying users. Many of the new users are using its services without paying for it, according to Apptopia, which is a research firm. That's why Zoom may be able to unlock its growth potential by targeting students. Some Chinese families have already used online-learning tools, say, an app called Fudaojun, to help their kids study at home. The cost: 150 yuan for 40 minutes.

Yuan, who grew up in China, seems to be a hands-on CEO who yearns to prove that his company is going to be another tech unicorn. Which means he has no choice but to do the heavy lifting of offering top-shelf services and gee-whiz products for demanding and cost-conscious clients.