Truecaller plans to more than double user base in India

Truecaller, a free global phone directory with a presence in every country in the world, expects to more than double its user base to about 120 million in India.

The Stockholm-based company, whose services are used to identify unknown phone numbers or block spam calls, is banking on the increasing smartphone penetration in the country to achieve this.

“We started 2014 with 40 million users and closed the year with over 100 million globally. Of this, 60 million users are in India. This is by far our biggest market and the opportunities here are huge,” Truecaller Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Alan Mamedi told BusinessLine in an interview.

As of December 2014, China had more than 500 million smartphones; India had 125 million and the rest of the world (except the US) below 50 million.

“Smartphone penetration in India is rising and we are geared up for the big challenge. The smartphones are becoming cheaper and better, and I think that’s just a beginning…,” said Mamedi, who is in India for a short visit.

Truecaller, started in 2009 by two students of at Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden (Mamedi and co-Founder Nami Zarringhalam), now has become one of the biggest start-up stories in the world. It raised a total of $79 million in funding and has no further fund-raising plans.

The company, which now employs 60 people globally, is also looking at ramping up headcount to more than 100 this year. Of this, the company expects more than 10 per cent to be in India.

There are over 2 billion searches on Truecaller every month, and in India there are about 3 lakh spam callers every day. “Actually India found us,” he said, talking about the increase in download of the application.

Truecaller, which has directory partners in certain countries, is also in talks with certain firms in India. He, however, declined to divulge further details.

“There are a lot of misconceptions on how the company gets its database,” Mamedi said on allegations of privacy intrusions. “It’s a permission-based functionality,” Mamedi said; Truecaller adds or updates its directory when a user provides information.

Truecaller is not limiting itself to mobile phones and is looking to expand services to other devices including wearables.

“Truecaller will continue to be the next big startup for a long time,” said Mamedi, who started the venture when he was 24 years.

“We are not selling Truecaller, never!” Mamedi, who is now 30-years-old, asserted.

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