Twitter to Strengthen Their Presence in India by Acquiring Mobile Tech Startup ZipDial
There is news that very soon Microblog Twitter could make its first acquisition in India. The news has come forward after the talks have been initiated with mobile technology services startup ZipDial, as per those three people who are said to possess the knowledge of the mentioned developments.
On Tuesday, the Technology news portal TechCrunch stated that the American company could pay up to “$30 million – $40 million”, in order to acquire ZipDial. ZipDial was founded in 2010 by a team of three technology entrepreneurs -Valerie Rozycki Wagoner, Sanjay Swamy, and Amiya Pathak.
This Bengaluru Company has developed a unique marketing and analytics platform. It is through a simple missed call- a unique Indian application through which ZipDial endeavors to link businesses and users. ZipDial has achieved deals with customers like Procter & Gamble, Unilever, Coca-Cola, Pepsi, and Nestle, who now use this service for promoting their businesses.
However, Valerie Rozycki Wagoner and Sanjay Swamy– the founders of ZipDial – have both denied news of any kind of negotiations regarding this with the microblog Twitter.
Wagoner, a Stanford graduate who is the chief executive officer of ZipDial reported that “There is no deal done. I cannot comment on anything”.On the contrary, those people who had briefed Economic Times earlier regarding the developments informed that the company has been in discussions with Twitter since late December 2014. If the report by a second person is to be believed, the startup is also in talks with two other companies but refused to name them when asked.
Founder of early-stage incubator AngelPrime, Sanjay Swamy, who is also on the board of ZipDial, rejects the news of acquisition completely and called them “rumors”.
ZipDial has also partnered with Twitter in the past. It entered into a partnership with Twitter India to facilitate those who had limited access to the internet or didn’t possess a smartphone to follow superstars by giving a missed call to a particular number. Users could later, also get connected with their favorite actor by “tweeting” through SMS. This facility began with the popular Hindi film actor Shah Rukh Khan, after which Amitabh Bachchan also came on board.
Facebook had also proclaimed the use of missed calls for generating leads from their ads for customers last year. The service was designed and run by ZipDial entirely.
According to the experts, the deal could be a data play for Twitter if it runs successfully. The main reason for this expected success would be because of one reason: mobile advertising becomes a big revenue earner for the company. Zipdial is unique in a way that it brings in user preferences for brands in tier 2 and tier 3 cities where smartphones have not tapped in yet.
Industry analysts have predicted that at least 40 technology ventures could be bought over by large corporations. Facebook had acquired tech startup Little Eye Labs in January 2014 and Bangalore – based Bookpad was bought by Yahoo in September of the same year.
