The buyout of Zipdial, which was one of its product partners in India, will be Twitter's first acquisition in the country.
"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. Twitter, in partnership with ZipDial, can make great content more accessible to everyone," said Christian Oestlien, vice president (Product) at Twitter.
Founded in 2010 by Sanjay Swamy, Valerie Wagoner and Amiya Pathak, ZipDial is a cloud-based mobile and analytics platform which allows companies to market to their target audience through so-called 'missed calls'.
Swamy, a serial entrepreneur who was also the founder of mCheck, a mobile payment start-up and a former technology volunteer at Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) is presently the chairman of the company.
The company has been so far raised undisclosed amount of funding from investors such as AngelPrime (where Swamy is a managing partner), Mumbai Angels, Jungle Ventures, 500 Startups and Times Internet.
ZipDial's platform has engaged nearly 60 million users with hundreds of marketer clients, including some of the world's leading brands and media companies. Over the past two years ZipDial and Twitter have collaborated on a variety of campaigns including the Indian elections, Bollywood film promotions and @MTVIndia's #RockTheVote "Dial the Hashtag" campaign.
"More than half of the world's population live in emerging and newly developed markets, and these consumers use their mobile phones differently. We build for them. 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," said Valerie Wagoner, Founder and CEO, ZipDial.
Twitter said the acquisition of ZipDial will significantly increase the company's investment in India, one of the countries where the company is seeing great growth. It will also bring Twitter a new engineering office in Bangalore where ZipDial has around 40 engineers working at the moment.
"We're extremely impressed with what ZipDial has built and are delighted to welcome them to the flock. In India, our primary mission, which is bolstered by this acquisition, is to help every Indian with a mobile device enjoy a great, relevant Twitter experience," said Rishi Jaitly, Market Director, India and Southeast Asia, Twitter.
With the emergence of innovative start-up companies in India, global technology majors are showing interest in working with them and, in some cases, eventually acquire them. In December 2013, social networking giant Facebook acquired Little Eye Labs, a Bengaluru-based start-up which develops software tools for analysing the performance of Android apps. Late last year, Internet giant Yahoo! acquired Bookpad, a city-based start-up that develops file editing and collaboration software.
via Top Stories - Google News http://ift.tt/1xP677l
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