Twitter on Tuesday said it has acquired Bengaluru-based mobile marketing and analytics firm ZipDial, making it the fourth Indian start-up to have found a global taker in the last one year after Little Eye labs, Impermium and Bookpad. Though neither Twitter nor ZipDial commented on the deal size, it is estimated to be around $30-40 million.
This is Twitter’s first acquisition in India and will lead to the San Francisco-based company having an engineering office in Bengaluru. ZipDial claims to have engaged nearly 60 million users and has P&G, Cadbury, Unilever, Colgate, Disney and Make My Trip among its clients. Founded by Valerie Wagoner, CEO, and Amiya Pathak, COO, in 2010, Zipdial combines SMS, voice, mobile web and access to mobile apps to bridge users from the offline to the online world.
“Being acquired by a successful Silicon Valley start-up is a great outcome for the company as well as the Indian start-up ecosystem. ZipDial goes beyond the acquisition of a engineering team as we have revenues and customers apart from our model being vindicated. This will put India on the map for many more Silicon Valley companies. Working with Twitter for more than a year has helped as they knew what they wanted and what they are getting,” ZipDial chairman Sanjay Swamy told FE.
Indian start-ups have of late evoked tremendous interest among global companies. In 2014, Facebook acquired Little Eye Labs while Google and Yahoo snapped up Impermium and Bookpad, respectively. “Our current rate is one company being acquired in a month. This year, we would like it to be one every month and later at least six every month. We need more smaller acquisitions to make our ecosystem stronger with a strong base,” said Sharad Sharma of products company lobby body Ispirt.