For the uniformed, ZipDial Mobile Solutions Pvt. Ltd. is a Bangalore-based company – an interactive mobile-based platform for marketing and customer relationships management. It offers a marketing and analytics platform that enables brand managers to drive customer engagement by capitalizing on missed calls. So far, ZipDial has spread its reach in India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.
Before narrating the ‘how’ of the ZipDial success story, lets take you through the ‘who’.
Valerie Rozycki Wagoner, the CEO & founder of ZipDial, after spending the early days of her career in the Silicon Valley at eBay as well as two startups, Ning and SayNow, did her post-graduation from Stanford University- Bachelors in Public Policy and Masters in Economic Sociology.
Co-founder and COO Amiya Pathak built the first version of the ZipDial platform. Previously, Amiya built companies such as Ketera and Zapak (acquired by Reliance) where he served as the Director of Platform Engineering. Amiya completed his engineering degree at IIT Kanpur and his MBA at IIM Calcutta.
Chairman Sanjay Swamy – He is currently a partner at Angel Prime where he invests in and builds startups. Previously, he was the CEO of mChek mobile payments, led Ketera India, and held other leadership roles at different companies in India and the US. Sanjay started his education in India and is a postgraduate from the University of Washington.
To understand the success story, let’s first understand how it works.
ZipDial gives brands a toll-free number that they can publicize for consumers to dial into. On dialing the toll-free number, the call rings once and disconnects and then the consumer receives an SMS with more information on the marketing campaign. Businesses pay an annual or bi-annual subscription or usage fee.
The formula of something as simple as giving a missed call to promote your brand presents a win-win situation for the brand and the consumer. Quoting Valerie from one of her interviews, as compared to QR code scanning, Facebook, which, in a developing country are facilitated with smartphones or sending an SMS, which some users may or may not know how to use or may not like to send. ZipDial offers 100% customer engagement since giving a missed call is the easiest it can get with any phone model you may have.
The idea for ZipDial came from one of the endless brainstorming sessions, at the end of which they decided to build a business model around the company.
Since 2010, when it was founded, ZipDial has worked with:
- Make My Trip
- Eno
- KOOVS
- Colgate
- Ola
- Airtel
- Cadbury
- Gillette
- Amnesty International
- KFC
- IBM
- Kingfisher
- Kotak
Citing it as one of the most unique business models available anywhere across the world, ZipDial managed to receive its funding of over $800,000 USD from both Indian and US angel investors, led by Mumbai angels. But the initial funds came from personal investments and friends and family of the founder and the co-founders.
ZipDial employs a team of 50 and has a sales office in Singapore to target Southeast Asian markets including Bangladesh, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Sri Lanka, as well as South Africa.