It's official: Twitter makes its first ever acquisition in India with ZipDial deal

Ending weeks of rumours and speculation, Twitter finally bought Indian startup ZipDial. While the value of the deal has not been disclosed, a TechCrunch report suggests that the deal had been closed between $30 to $40 million. Bangalore-based mobile marketing and analytics company  ZipDial came into prominence with its implementation of missed calls for user verification, alerts and other use cases. ZipDial’s platform has engaged nearly 60 million users with hundreds of marketer clients, including leading brands and media companies.   How ZipDial works: ZipDial has built 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. For example, through ZipDial, it’s easy to engage with a publisher or brand by making a toll-free “missed call” to a designated phone number. The caller will then begin receiving inbound content and further engagement on their phone in real time through voice, SMS or an app notification. [caption id=“attachment_1973833” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Reuters[/caption] Rishi Jaitly, market director, India and Southeast Asia, Twitter, said, “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. 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.” ZipDial is Twitter’s first ever acquisition in India. The acquisition increases Twitter’s investment in India, one of the countries where the company is seeing great growth, and also brings a new engineering office for Twitter in Bangalore. Over the past two years ZipDial and Twitter have collaborated on a variety of campaigns, including the Indian elections and Bollywood film promotions, and more. During the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, BJP and Congress had worked with Twitter and ZipDial to make their Twitter accounts accessible to all users in India on via phones through ZipDial’s missed call-based alerts service. “Twitter and ZipDial already have a history of getting great content to Indians. In recent years, iconic actors like @iamsrk, @SrBachchan and @SuperStarRajini, religious leaders like @SriSri and many others partnered with Twitter and ZipDial so Indian users could follow them on Twitter by simply making a toll-free “missed call” to a designated phone number. Callers then started receiving inbound content on their phone in real time through voice, SMS or an app notification,” Jaitly said in blog post. ZipDial was co-founded by Valerie Wagoner, Amiya Pathak, and Sanjay Swamy. ZipDial’s investors include Blume Ventures, AngelPrime, Sunil Goyal of YourNest Ventures, and Mumbai Angels, as well as its largest supporters were, Jungle Ventures, Unilazer Ventures, and 500 Startups.