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Twitter in Talks to Acquire Indian Mobile Startup ZipDial: Report

Twitter in Talks to Acquire Indian Mobile Startup ZipDial: Report

By Robin Sinha | Updated: 13 January 2015 12:40 IST

Twitter, after acquiring Mitro labs in August last year, is now reportedly in talks to acquire ZipDial, an Indian mobile solution startup.

TechCrunch quotes multiple sources as saying the deal is in different stages. One says says the deal has already been closed at $30 million-$40 million and will be announced as soon as this week. Another says a different company (possibly Facebook) is also eyeing ZipDial, though talks have cooled down "over the holidays". The report also cites another source to say the deal has not been closed yet, and the two companies are still in talks.

ZipDial, founded by CEO Valarie R. Wagoner, COO Amiya Pathak and Chairman Sanjay Swamy in 2010, has already worked in collaboration with Twitter before. The firm let users give a missed call on a particular number associated with a celebrity or other Twitter handle in order to receive their tweet alerts via a text message service on the handsets.

The firm also teamed up with Facebook in July last year to launch a new advertisement format with missed calls. As a part of the service, users would click on a 'missed call button' in an advertisement on Facebook and receive further alerts from the brand via SMS and more.

The micro-blogging firm is certainly looking to monetise its service, and appears to be trying to offer advertising to partners across platforms. It in June acquired another mobile advertising startup called Namo Media last year. While the terms of the deal were not disclosed, Namo Media said in a blog post that its technology would be rolled into MoPub, the ad serving platform that Twitter purchased in 2013 for more than $300 million.

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