India - A Silicon Valley for Emerging Markets?

By Dinesh C Sharma, Yale Global Online, June 4, 2015

NEW DELHI: Providers make money when cell phone users answer a call, and entrepreneurs in India have found a way of profiting when calls go unanswered as well. The story of “missed call” entrepreneurs epitomizes the innovations in India’s IT market leading to mega-mergers.

Twitter made international headlines in January with the acquisition of Indian mobile marketing startup ZipDial for a reported $30 million. ZipDial is a brainchild of California-born Valerie Wagoner who moved to Bangalore after a stint with Ebay. She was amused over how Indians used their mobile phones, especially the feature of “missed call” – placing a call, letting the phone ring and then hanging up – to convey expected messages like a safe arrival to friends and relatives.

Wagoner teamed up with cofounders Amiya Pathak and Sanjay Swamy to monetize “missed calls,” turning these into a mobile marketing tool in 2010. Marketers encourage customers to make a missed call, and then they respond with marketing messages, coupons and other deals – ideal for emerging markets like India where data speeds are slow and data use is relatively low. Soon ZipDial counted dozens of Indian companies among its clients.

Not to be outdone, Facebook forged a partnership with Mumbai-based VivaConnect to scale up its “missed call ad unit” business. The social networking site had acquired Bangalore-based analytics and monitoring product startup, Little Eye Labs, for a reported $15 million a year ago.  

Read full story here in Yale Global