Twitter has acquired an Indian mobile marketing start-up ZipDial in a bid to ramp up its business and revenues in one of its fastest growing markets.

By on 13-11-2018

GLOBAL GIANT TWITTER BUYS INDIAN STARTUP ZIPDIAL

Twitter has acquired an Indian mobile marketing start-up ZipDial in a bid to ramp up its business and revenues in one of its fastest growing markets. ZipDial was set up by California-born Valerie Wagoner who moved to India and was intrigued by the Indian ‘missed call’ system – where people call each other, let it ring once or twice and intentionally hang up, using the missed call to convey a message. ZipDial was launched in 2010.The micro-blogging giant, however, did not disclose the amount for which it acquired the Bangalore-based firm.

According to reports, the deal value is between USD 30-40 million (between Rs 185 crore-Rs 247 crore).This is a huge achievement for the entire ZipDial team, and an opportunity to reflect on everything they accomplished since their start in 2010. ZipDial — set up in 2010 by Wagoner, angel investor Sanjay Swamy and Amiya Pathak — claims a user base of nearly 60 million. The company has built a platform that facilitates a missed call service from a user's end. Armed with a user's phone number and preferences, ZipDial helps brands including Procter & Gamble, Coca-Cola, Pepsi and Nestle better target their potential customers, the majority of whom are not online. "

The company was founded on the insight that consumers and brands in emerging markets behave differently and have different needs. ZipDial build for them and their unique behaviors.
For example, ZipDial leveraged the ubiquitous behavior of “missed calls” between friends and applied it as an offline call-to-action for brand engagement. Additionally, prepaid recharge or top-up (money added to a user’s prepaid mobile account) is considered as valuable as currency in emerging markets. That became a foundation for couponing and gratification products. Another central behavior is the very frugal usage of mobile data. Users in India, for example, consume on average 60 MB of data per month, only 4.5% of the 1.38 GB consumed each month by users in the U.S.

By designing ZipDial’s platform and engagement products for these behaviors, ZipDial have achieved more than one billion connections with brands across 60 million users. Zipdial innovations have led to award-winning work with the world’s leading brands across South Asia, Southeast Asia and Africa.

ZipDial enables global brands to engage with 100% of their consumers.ZipDial patent-pending consumer intelligence platform drives solutions such as couponing, friend referrals, on-pack activations and more. Every one of Zip Dial clients including P&G, Disney and Colgate have 2 to 5 times more unique users engaging on ZipDial than on any social network.

Twitter's purchase has spurred anticipation in India's exit-starved technology product sector. According to a study by iSpirt and investment bank Signal Hill, India recorded just 141 deals, compared with 4,728 in the US during 2010 and 2013. Indian startups are surely piquing the interest of international technology giants, at the cost of home-grown technology companies