Weeks after local acquisition, Twitter confirms new R&D center in India

Twitter is set to open an R&D facility in India, the company confirmed today. This is not really a surprise, since it comes weeks after Twitter acquired local startup Zipdial. It means the Twitter-Zipdial office in Bangalore will be more than just a base for salespeople – it’ll also develop new Twitter products.

Rishi Jaitly, Twitter’s head of India, confirmed the research facility in an interview today with the Financial Times (paywall; hat-tip to The Next Web for spotting this).

“It does constitute a big vote of confidence from Twitter at the global level in India,” Jaitly told the FT. “It is a big investment in India and emerging markets, and an engineering center is a big outcome [of the deal].”

Zipdial pioneered a system whereby companies can set up a phone number that Indians can make a “missed call” to (dial, but then hang up in order to avoid paying for the call) in order to receive certain information via SMS or a free call-back. This form of marketing sort of overlaps with Twitter’s business side.

Valerie Wagoner, the founder of ZipDial, also confirmed the move to the FT:

Twitter wants engineering teams based in emerging markets because we have empathy for users in these markets. This isn’t a case of ideas from San Francisco, being built here; we are going to have full control over products.

See: Twitter’s acquisition of Zipdial means it’s going after more users in emerging nations

(Source: Financial Times)