New Delhi: Twitter on Tuesday announced that it has acquired Bangalore-based marketing platform, ZipDial. The deal is, however, said to be fixed between $30 and $40 million.
The deal is the latest among a string of small yet high-profile acquisitions of Indian startups by global technology giants and augurs well for India’s burgeoning entrepreneurial ecosystem.
ZipDial builds a mobile platform that lets people follow and engage with content across all interfaces. The user experience combines SMS, voice, mobile web, and access to mobile apps to bridge users from offline to online.
ZipDial assigns companies a special phone number which their brands can use in their print ads or TV commercials. Customers call the number and hang up before they are charged for the call. In turn, brands can phone or send text messages about their business to the ‘missed callers’.
ZipDial’s clients include Unilever, Disney, Gillette, Amazon, Facebook and, of course, Twitter, whose customers have used the platform for placing orders, receiving coupons or entering contests.
The Bangalore-based company was co-founded by US-educated CEO Valerie R Wagoner and COO Amiya Pathak along with Sanjay Swamy ​in early 2010. The company has raised an undisclosed amount of money from investors that include Jungle Ventures, 500 Startups, Times Internet and Mumbai Angels.
Social networking companies have been trying to monetise their huge user base in the country. Twitter had appointed Rishi Jaitly for business development in India couple of years back and has been steadily expanding its operations, stitching partnerships with brands and media firms. Last year, the company had acquired a mobile advertising start up called Namo Media.