Twitter is moving forward with plans to open a research and design center in Bangalore as it targets more users in India, the Financial Times reported today.
In January, the social network bought the Bangalore-based mobile marketing startup called ZipDial reportedly for about $40 million.
Twitter also said then that purchasing the company would bring a new engineering office in Bangalore, which will be its first center outside the United States.
It does constitute a big vote of confidence from Twitter at the global level in India, Rishi Jaitly, Twitter s India Market Director told the Financial Times. It is a big investment in India and emerging markets, and an engineering center is a big outcome [of the deal].
Yesterday, Twitter s shares were up 6 percent after the social network announced that it struck a deal with Flipboard and Yahoo Japan to display its advertisements outside its microblogging website.
But the company, which releases its fourth-quarter earnings tomorrow, also hasn t been growing its sales fast enough to cover its costs and faces pressure from investors to increase its monthly active users.
Photo credit: The Twitter icon on an iPhone in October 2013. Laura A. Oda/Bay Area News Group
