Zipdial helps Twitter get access to every Indian with a mobile phone: CEO Valerie Wagoner

Valerie Wagoner, co-founder and CEO, Zipdial, moved to India about seven years ago to take up an assignment with mobile payments company mChek. The decision to start Zipdial came two years later . She is busy closing Twitter's acquisition of her company, but took time out to speak briefly to Business Today. Excerpts:

Q. What was the motivation behind Zipdial?
Wagoner: Initially, we started with the business, attempting to be anything to anyone, using the missed-call technology in many ways. Then we got a significant break with Proctor & Gamble as the first big client. We, thereby, realised that there are lots of problems that we could solve for FMCGs and started focusing on them. That became our biggest vertical. Media became our second big vertical.

Q: Has 'missed call' been your primary product?
Wagoner: We don't care about missed calls per se. It is more of a mobile engagement platform that drives results for emerging markets. Some of it uses features like missed call or mobile recharge as gratification. Some of it is a strategy around toll-free mobile data. Therefore, there are lots of things that go into user experience. Missed call is a very nice catchy one, though. It turns out that half of the world uses this behavior. The terminology is different across geographies. In South Africa they call it 'flashing' or, sometimes, 'beeping'.

Q: When did Zipdial see its high point?
Wagoner: Well, every next month or the next quarter is a high point.

Q: When did you think that you are doing it right?
Wagoner: The first inflexion point was validating user experience. We tested this around cricket and that got massive adoption. Within a few months we got millions of users dialing in millions of times and engaging with content. Next was customer value proposition when we started getting customers like P&G and Unilever.

Q: What is the company's scale now? How many customers do you work with?
Wagoner: We don't talk about revenues, but we have more than 60 million users and more than one thousand customers across emerging markets such as Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and South Africa. We just launched our services in Philippines.

Q: What does Zipdial's acquisition by Twitter mean for start-ups in India?
Wagoner: We need more case studies like this. We need more role models in the industry. It's these kinds of stories that help build a whole ecosystem.

Q: How does it help Twitter?
Wagoner: It helps Twitter to get more access to every Indian with a mobile phone, regardless of whether or not they have data connection or smart phones. The best of content exists on Twitter and it is phenomenal that it is real-time and public.