Mobile marketing and communications startup ZipDial Mobile Solutions Pvt Ltd has raised funding from Jungle Ventures, a Singapore-based venture capital firm. The funding is not a new round, instead, is part of the investment the company had disclosed in December last year.
At the time, Times Internet Ltd, the digital arm of The Times of India Group had invested an undisclosed amount in ZipDial. Prior to that, in the same month, the company had raised under $500,000 from Silicon Valley-based incubator-cum-seed fund 500 Startups. The new development was first reported by NextBigWhat.
The investment will be used for ZipDial’s global expansion plan, and the company has already launched its operations in Sri Lanka as part of the same. In December, Valerie had mentioned that the company will first launch its operations in Bangladesh in January 2013, post that it will also look at other key markets like Indonesia, the Philippines and Nigeria. This is where Jungle Ventures can help the company.
ZipDial was set up in 2010 by Valerie (CEO), Sanjay Swamy (chairman) and Amiya Pathak (COO). The startup offers a marketing communication tool based on the ‘missed call’ concept. Simply put, a user can give the company a missed call and ZipDial registers the number, which is then used by its clients to get access to mobile users who have expressed interest in their products/services. ZipDial clients leverage these numbers for sending promotional messages or information.
As of December 2012, the company had around 400 paid customers including brands such as Procter & Gamble, Unilever, Cadbury, Disney, MakeMyTrip and Café Coffee Day, among others. According to the company, its ‘tool’ increases advertisement response rates by 2-50 times while the viral nature of its application increases the reach of campaigns by 30-75 per cent.
The company had raised Rs 3.5 crore in its first round of funding in April 2011 from Mumbai Angels, Blume Ventures and AngelPrime. Mumbai Angels had led the round. In January this year, Mumbai-based ANI Technologies Pvt Ltd, which runs an online marketplace for cabs and car rental services under the brand Olacabs, had launched a cab tracker SMS service on ZipDial platform to enable customers to track the cab’s distance from their location and expected time to reach the location almost instantly.