Social networking site Twitter is all set to open its first research and design centre outside the US, and the location will most likely be Bangalore as per reports.The team of ZipDial, an Indian startup Twitter acquired for $40 million, will be the basis for the R&D facility according to sources.
The new R&D centre in Bengaluru will work on improving user adoption in emerging markets. Twitter acquired ZipDial in late January. The ZipDial team also works in the similar segment with their technology. The report, that Twitter is planning to establish an R&D centre in Bengaluru has been first published by Financial Times via The Next Web and the report comes in line with the announcement by the company that ZipDial’s expertise will help Twitter in becoming more accessible worldwide.
On its blog, Twitter also announced that with this acquisition the company now has an engineering team in India. VP of product at Twitter, Christian Oestlien said that with this acquisition their investment in India has increased significantly and India is one of the most important markets for the platform. ZipDial’s mobile platform offers facilities like SMS, voice calls and mobile Web, and the platform bridges offline and online usage.
The company uses ‘missed call system’ to provide callers receive free inbound content, instead of using costly means like mobile data to access information. The company uses ‘missed calls’ to connect brands with the mobile audience in locations where Internet connectivity is poor. ZipDial started operations in 2010, founded by CEO Valarie R. Wagoner, COO Amiya Pathak and chairman Sanjay Swamy. ZipDial has collaborated with Facebook and number of brands for their operations so far.
