Twitter share price up, inks first Indian deal to acquire ZipDial

Twitter Inc announced on Tuesday that it had reached a deal to acquire Indias marketing start-up company ZipDial, marking its push into emerging markets.

Bangalore-based company specializes in “missed call” marketing. ZipDial provides its clients, including IBM, Yum! and Procter & Gamble among others, with specific phone numbers, which when called trigger a return call or a SMS text message.

Customers dial the provided number and disconnect the call before they are charged, receiving free information about the specific client accompanied with advertisements. ZipDials services are important for India as most of its consumers cant afford to purchase data plans.

“Over the next several years, billions of people will come online for the first time in countries like Brazil, India and Indonesia,” Christian Oestlien, Twitter’s vice-president of product said in a statement. “Twitter, in partnership with ZipDial, can make great content more accessible to everyone.”

Mr. Oestlien also said that the acquisition would jump start Twitters efforts to achieve rapid growth in India and other emerging markets.

The two companies did not disclose any financial data related to the deal, however, according to news website Techcrunch the acquisition was valued at between $30 million and $40 million, citing people familiar with the matter.

Last year, Twitters user count in India doubled to 18 million, according to researcher eMarketer. India surpassed the UK and became the companys third-largest market in the world. The country is also projected to hit 48 million Twitter users by 2018.

Twitters total monthly active users climbed to 284 million during the quarter to September.

However, researcher Magna Global estimates Indias advertisement market at $7 billion, including less then $1 billion online, in 2014, far less than the US, projected at $168 billion.

The acquisition is a continuation of an increased interest from US companies towards India. Last year Facebook purchased Little Eye Labs, a mobile-oriented start-up company, and Yahoo! acquired Bookpad in 2014.

ZipDial, founded in 2010, has currently has 56 employees, which will stay at their positions after the deal with Twitter.

Twitter gained 1.03% on Friday and closed at $37.31 in New York, marking a one-year decrease of 40.02%. The company is valued at $23.67 billion. The stock edged up 1.02% at 10:12 GMT on Tuesday during pre-market trading.

According to CNN Money, the 33 analysts offering 12-month price forecasts for Twitter have a median target of $50.00, with a high estimate of $64.00 and a low estimate of $28.00. The median estimate represents a 34.01% increase from the last close price.