Twitter makes first India acquisition with ZipDial

Deal value not disclosed; reports suggest $30-mn payout for the cloud-based mobile marketing platform

Microblogging website Twitter on Tuesday announced it would buy Bengaluru-based mobile marketing and analytics platform ZipDial.

The buyout of ZipDial, one of its product partners in India, will be Twitter’s first acquisition in the country. Neither Twitter nor ZipDial disclosed the size of the deal. However, an earlier report by technology news portal TechCrunch had said the California-based social media company might have shelled out between $30 million and $40 million for the acquisition.

“With today’s (Tuesday’s) acquisition, Twitter will become more accessible to users across India and other emerging markets,” Rishi Jaitly, market director (India & Southeast Asia), Twitter, told Business Standard.

Founded in 2010 by Sanjay Swamy, Valerie Wagoner and Amiya Pathak, ZipDial is a cloud-based mobile and analytics platform that allows companies to market their products to target audiences through so-called ‘missed calls’. Swamy, a serial entrepreneur who also founded  mCheck, a mobile payment start-up, is the chairman of ZipDial.  The company has raised undisclosed amounts of funding from investors like AngelPrime (where Swamy is a managing partner), Mumbai Angels, Jungle Ventures, 500 Startups and Times Internet.

Following the acquisition, both Wagoner and Pathak will join Twitter as directors for growth markets and work with Christian Oestlien, vice-president (products) at Twitter. Around 30 engineering staff members working with ZipDial will be part of Twitter’s engineering team and remain located in Bengaluru.

“Over several coming 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 might prevent them from experiencing the true power of the internet. Twitter, in partnership with ZipDial, can make great content more accessible to everyone,” said Oestlien.

According to Wagoner, ZipDial has been tripling its revenue every year for the past four years.  Besides, ZipDial has engaged nearly 60 million users with hundreds of marketer clients, including more than 500 global 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’ campaigns.

“ZipDial’s innovative platform has already scaled across South Asia, Southeast Asia and Africa. We are thrilled to expand our impact to a global level with Twitter,” said Wagoner.

With the emergence of innovative start-ups in India, global technology majors are showing interest in working with those and, in some cases, acquiring those. In December 2013, social networking giant Facebook acquired Little Eye Labs, a Bengaluru-based start-up that 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.

THE INDIA TWEET

• Acquisition is in line with Twitter’s strategy to grow in emerging markets
  

 

ZipDial’s platform will enable mobile users, who don’t have access to internet for connecting to Twitter
 

ZipDial engineering team of 30-odd people will join Twitter
 

ZipDial founders Valerie Wagoner and Amiya Pathak will join Twitter as directors of growth markets in the product organisation