Twitter is in talks with ZipDial, a five-year-old mobile technology start-up, seeking a partnership model while also exploring a possible acquisition of the Bengaluru-based start-up, two people close to the development told FE.
“Talks are still happening. The deal is not done yet,” said one of the sources.
“On behalf of Sanjay (Swamy) and other partners at AngelPrime (a fund that invests in start-ups), we want to state that we don’t comment on speculations and rumours,” said an AngelPrime official in an emailed response to FE.
Swamy is the chairman and co-founder of ZipDial and an investor in several other start-ups. Reports had earlier suggested that ZipDial had held talks with Facebook on a potential acquisition, which FE could not verify independently.
ZipDial was co-founded by US-educated CEO Valarie R Wagoner and COO Amiya Pathak along with Swamy in early 2010.
Twitter had partnered with ZipDial earlier to enable users to get tweets from celebrities over SMS on their mobile phones. ZipDial had also partnered with Facebook to launch an innovative advertisement format with missed calls. When users click on “missed call” in a particular advertisement on the social network, they will get alerts from the brand.
Social networking companies have been trying to monetise their huge user base in the country. Twitter had appointed Rishi Jaitly for business development in India couple of years back and has been steadily expanding its operations, stitching partnerships with brands and media firms. Last year, the company had acquired a mobile advertising startup called Namo Media.