Twitter buys Indian mobile marketing start-up ZipDial - Livemint

The acquisition will also pave the way for Twitter's new engineering office in Bangalore. Photo: Mint

Hyderabad: Twitter Inc. on Tuesday said it is acquiring Bangalore-based mobile marketing and analytics company ZipDial Mobile Solutions Pvt. Ltd, marking the first acquisition for the San Francisco-based company in India, and significantly boosting its investments in the country.

The acquisition will also pave the way for Twitter's new engineering office in Bangalore. The deal terms weren't disclosed but a 12 January report by technology website TechCrunch, quoting unnamed sources, pegged it at $30-40 million.

In January 2014, the world's largest social networking site Facebook Inc. announced that it had bought Little Eye Labs, an Indian start-up that makes a software tool for analysing the performance of Android apps. And in September, Yahoo said it had acquired Bangalore-based start-up Bookpad, makers of Docspad.

Founded in 2010, ZipDial's mobile marketing platform gives information about businesses to users when they place a missed call. These interactions are useful in areas where people aren't always connected to the Internet or can access data only through intermittent WiFi networks, Twitter said in a statement.

It added that the acquisition makes Twitter's online social network with 284 million active users more accessible to people around the world.

"Over the next several years, billions of people will come online for the first time in countries like Brazil, India and Indonesia. For many, their first online experience will be on a mobile device—but the cost of data may prevent them from experiencing the true power of the Internet," Christian Oestlien, vice president of Twitter's product division said.

"We believe Twitter—a platform invented for SMS and rich in media—is a perfect match for India, a mobile-first country with a celebrated media heritage," Rishi Jaitly, market director for India and Southeast Asia, Twitter said.

"ZipDial's innovative platform has already scaled across South Asia, Southeast Asia and Africa, where we operate. We are thrilled to expand our impact to a global level with Twitter," serial entrepreneur and ZipDial's founder and chief executive officer Valerie Wagoner said.

ZipDial's marketing platform has engaged nearly 60 million users and its clients include brands such as Pepsi, Lakme, Oreo, Colgate, Café Coffee Day and Disney. Social networking sites such as Twitter.com and Facebook.com used the platform, as did the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

ZipDial earlier raised money from Jungle Ventures, Blume Ventures, 500 Startups, Mumbai Angels, Times Internet and Ronnie Screwvala's Unilazer.

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