With enough creativity and perseverance, you can make a business off of anything, even missed calls apparently. That’s exactly what an Indian startup known as Zipdial does by turning missed calls into a kind of message that allows users to avoid paying for actual calls or SMS. For some reason, this has drawn the eye of Twitter, which recently confirmed that it has acquired the company. 

Twitter confirmed this morning that it has acquired Zipdial, an Indian startup that has made a business off of something really unusual – missed calls. Both Twitter and Zipdial wrote blog posts (see here and here) about the buy-up, but neither revealed how much the deal is worth. This is Twitter’s first India acquisition. In India, where people are very frugal with their rather pricey mobile call and data plans, missed calls have become a useful signal between friends and family members. Two school friends might agree that sending a missed call at around 8am is a sign that one person has arrived at the usual meeting spot to walk to school together, thereby saving them the expense of a call or SMS.