iWorld
Twitter makes first acquisition in India with Zip Dial
MUMBAI: Twitter India has acquired the Indian marketing start up Zip Dial, in order to make the micro blogging site more accessible to people in India and around the world. This is Twitter’s first acquisition in India and is pegged close to $30-$35 million. ZipDial was co-founded by Valerie Wagoner, Amiya Pathak and Sanjay Swamy.
Making the announcement on the micro-blogging site, Twitter India and Southeast Asia market director Rishi Jaitly said, “On behalf of our India operations, I’m delighted to welcome Zip Dial’s leadership, employees and a new office in Bangalore to the spirited team that is Twitter India.”
With the new deal in the kitty, Jaitly added that their primary mission was to reach out to every Indian with a mobile device in order to facilitate a relevant Twitter experience. “We believe Twitter – a platform invented for SMS and rich in media – is a perfect match for India, a mobile-first country with a celebrated media heritage,” he said.
Twitter and Zip Dial already have a history of getting content to Indians. In recent times Bollywood actors like Shah Rukh Khan, Amitabh Bachchan and Rajinikanth have partnered with Twitter and Zip Dial to allow users to follow these celebrities by making a toll-free “missed call” to a designated phone number. Callers then started receiving inbound content on their phone in real time through voice, SMS or an app notification.
During last year’s general elections, the two national political parties, Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) and Indian National Congress (INC) worked in tandem with both the partners to make their accounts accessible to all users in India on any phone, on any network and in any language.
Jaitly concluded by saying that with the Cricket World Cup around the corner and more Indian icons joining the platform every day, 2015 promises to be another big year for Twitter in India.
iWorld
Anisha Mehta joins JioStar as senior director, ecosystem partnerships
Former Pocket FM and Amazon executive to drive partnership-led growth
MUMBAI: JioStar has appointed Anisha Mehta as senior director, ecosystem partnerships, strengthening its leadership bench as it sharpens its focus on alliance-led growth.
In her new role, Mehta will be responsible for building strategic partnerships, deepening content ecosystems and driving collaboration-led initiatives across JioStar’s platforms.
She joins from Pocket FM, where she led global partnerships, overseeing content acquisition and optimising the digital supply chain across international markets. Before that, Mehta managed digital supply chain operations for subscription video-on-demand and miniTV at Prime Video and Amazon MGM Studios.
Earlier in her career, she served as partnerships and monetisation lead at Xiaomi Technology, playing a key role in launching the company’s television business in India. She has also held leadership roles at HolidayIQ, Deccan Herald and Bennett Coleman & Co Limited.
The appointment underscores JioStar’s intent to strengthen its partner ecosystem at a time when content distribution, device integration and platform collaboration are becoming central to scale and differentiation in India’s crowded digital media market.
