Twitter to Open R&D Centre in Bengaluru: Report

Twitter is reportedly planning to open a research and design centre in Bengaluru, soon after acquiring ZipDial - a startup that is also based in the city. If reports are true, the R&D centre would be Twitter's first outside of the US.

The new R&D centre in Bengaluru will reportedly be working on boosting user adoption in emerging markets. The ZipDial team, acquired by Twitter in late January, was offering technology in a similar vein, using 'missed calls' as a means of connecting brands with the mobile audience lacking proper Internet connectivity.

Twitter's plan to open an R&D centre in Bengaluru was reported by the Financial Times (via The Next Web), and is in-line with the company's announcement that the Bangalore-based company's expertise would be used to make Twitter more accessible around the world. Twitter on its blog had also said the acquisition would also give it an engineering team in India.

"This acquisition significantly increases our investment in India, one of the countries where we're seeing great growth, and also brings us a new engineering office in Bangalore," said Christian Oestlien, VP of Product.

ZipDial's mobile platform offers a combination of SMS, voice calls, and the mobile Web all together to bridge offline and online usage, using its missed call system, so that callers will receive free inbound content, instead of having to use relatively expensive systems like sending SMSes or using mobile data.

Founded by CEO Valarie R. Wagoner, COO Amiya Pathak and Chairman Sanjay Swamy in 2010, Zipdial has carried out similar campaigns with Facebook as well, and has worked with a number of brands for similar engagement. In a blog post confirming the acquisition, ZipDial notes that it has carried out a billion connections across 60 million users.