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JioMeet: Original Work or Colourable Imitation?
‘Go Digital’, a phrase that today, is almost germane to businesses has been transformed into a juggernaut by the name of Jio Platforms. The wholly owned subsidiary of Reliance Industries Ltd., India’s behemoth group of industries, has become the face of digital India. In 2019, Reliance Jio along with the company’s various digital ventures were clubbed under one ‘Jio Platforms’. Since then Jio has added a myriad of products and services under its banner, centered around 4G services, home broadband, entertainment, social connectivity, news and utility.
With the world reeling with Covid-19, the demand for operator services has spiked, thereby offering fecund opportunities for Jio Platforms to announce a series of investments cum partnerships from technology giants namely Facebook, Google and Intel, and investors such as Silver Lake, KKR, Vista among many.
Jio Platforms has raised $20 billion in just eight weeks, selling close to 33% of its stake .
However, the buzz surrounding Jio Platforms cannot be solely credited to its stupefying investments and partnerships. Recently, Jio Platforms announced its advent into the Video Conferencing sector via JioMeet, a move received rather ambivalently by the Indian audience. Within hours of its official launch, the homegrown video conferencing app was heavily censured for being nothing but a ‘copy and paste’ of the already existing Video Conferencing favourite, Zoom.
The similarities between the two apps were inescapable and it got netizens questioning whether there was any effort taken by the digital giant towards any innovation of sorts.
“Why waste time and resources in designing,” said one user on Twitter, “Just do things we are good at- copy and paste.”
The ‘Copy & Paste’
I. Straight off, the Logo. Zoom’s white-on-blue logo is only ‘a shade’ lighter to the one used by JioMeet.
Can you decipher which logo is that of JioMeet’s and which is that of Zoom’s?
II. When compared side by side, right from the landing page, the similarities are striking. The meetings page, the process to join a meeting, the procedure to schedule one, the user’s profile page, the About page, the contacts and swiping right to enable safe driving mode – the user interface (UI) of both apps look deceptively similar. Barring minor differences in text size and colour, the use of similar phrases, design and placements is likely to cause an easy confusion between the two.
