Skip to main content [aditude-amp id="stickyleaderboard" targeting='{"env":"staging","page_type":"article","post_id":1833493,"post_type":"story","post_chan":"none","tags":null,"ai":false,"category":"none","all_categories":"business,social,","session":"B"}']

Twitter’s first emoji from a non-U.S. brand is the Indian government’s #MakeInIndia campaign

@michaeldwm
Image Credit: #MakeInIndia

The Indian government’s #MakeInIndia campaign, aimed at promoting India as “a great place for foreign direct investment to transform the country into a global manufacturing hub,” has become the first non-U.S. brand to launch its own Twitter emoji, the social network said Tuesday.

This follows a visit by India’s minister of commerce and industry, Nirmala Sitharaman, to Twitter’s global headquarters in San Francisco, where she met Twitter’s newly confirmed chief executive, Jack Dorsey.

[aditude-amp id="flyingcarpet" targeting='{"env":"staging","page_type":"article","post_id":1833493,"post_type":"story","post_chan":"none","tags":null,"ai":false,"category":"none","all_categories":"business,social,","session":"B"}']

Twitter said the two discussed “the importance of India as a strategic growth market, and how Twitter’s platform can be used to promote the country’s brand to the rest of the world.”

Twitter is still struggling to gain wider adoption in India — one report from January said that Twitter accounts for just 17 percent of social network users in the country.

AI Weekly

The must-read newsletter for AI and Big Data industry written by Khari Johnson, Kyle Wiggers, and Seth Colaner.

Included with VentureBeat Insider and VentureBeat VIP memberships.

But it’s a highly important market for the company, expected to surpass the U.S. to become the world’s second-largest mobile market by 2017. Meanwhile, approximately 80 percent of Twitter’s monthly active users are now on mobile.

In a statement, Shailesh Rao, Twitter’s vice president of Asia Pacific, Latin America, and emerging markets, said:

The “Make in India” programme is both visionary and wide-reaching and it will provide long-term benefits in the years ahead as more manufacturing investments will transform the economy and create millions of jobs for the Indian workforce. As we are a platform for the world’s leaders to interact and communicate with each other every day, we are honoured to be a trusted partner for the Indian government to reach decision-makers worldwide and to contribute to the economic renaissance of India.

In related titbits, Twitter on Tuesday replaced stars with hearts for favoriting Vines and tweets, and at the end of last month rolled out the ability for all users to tweet a poll.

[aditude-amp id="medium1" targeting='{"env":"staging","page_type":"article","post_id":1833493,"post_type":"story","post_chan":"none","tags":null,"ai":false,"category":"none","all_categories":"business,social,","session":"B"}']

[aditude-amp id="medium2" targeting='{"env":"staging","page_type":"article","post_id":1833493,"post_type":"story","post_chan":"none","tags":null,"ai":false,"category":"none","all_categories":"business,social,","session":"B"}']

VentureBeat's mission is to be a digital town square for technical decision-makers to gain knowledge about transformative enterprise technology and transact. Learn More

Explore

None Business Social