With nearly two-thirds of its userbase and over 72 per cent of its revenue coming from India, Truecaller is now working on strengthening its adtech engine, streamlining its business offerings in the country and is also complying with data localisation rules. In an interview with BusinessLine, Rishit Jhunjhunwala, Chief Product Officer and Managing Director, Truecaller India, takes us through all of this and how contrary to its known model of collecting data from signed up users’ phonebook, people can delist themselves from its database.
Over the last two years, we have seen frauds happening through phone calls and messaging. What were Truecaller’s observations?
The last two years have been challenging for consumers and so was for us. During the Covid times we saw a whole different wave of scams taking place, ranging from things like somebody claiming to have Remdesivir, or asking to transfer ₹10,000 to book a bed. . We partnered with agencies that provided verified numbers such as MapMyIndia, FactChecker and even ministries. We created verified list of Covid healthcare providers which was published on the app for free.
We also had to learn from new spam and scam patterns, we had to catch up quickly to be able to warn people on such calls.
What are some of the innovative products the India team is working on?
Trucaller for Business has just started, we have big plans for that. We are coming out with a lot of Adtech, that is something I am excited about. Most of our revenue comes from advertising and how do we ensure all of this is done in a privacy-conscious manner, where no user data is ever sold or shared.
Advertising accounts for significant portions of our revenues. We invest in the adtech space. We have two types of advertising, ads that we sell directly and programmatic advertisements we run. For direct sales, we look for more creative ways that brands can interact with the audience. We are building capabilities to have a better, engaging and different advertising. On programmatic ads, we are looking at how do we expand the audience that we have, how do we get more intelligent at advertising. And how do we get less intrusive towards consumers from advertisements.
We recently acquired a company called Call Hero, it has modern services I have seen and we are working on it.
What is your strategy for acquisitions? What capabilities are you looking for?
In terms of acquisitions, we believe that inorganic growth is important for companies. It is one of the primary reasons why we went public. It gives us the ability to make large acquisitions as we go along. Call Hero was the first such acquisition. Their product was complimentary to the problems we were looking to solve in the communications space.
We don’t have a target as such for the acquisitions that we make in India or elsewhere, but we are always on the lookout. There’s a significant war chest that is available to us now for possible acquisitions.
Last year, the company had slashed premium subscription pricing by 50 per cent, did it help get more customers?
We have offers running every now and then. It’s a seasonal type of a business. Towards holidays, Holi, Diwali, Christmas, and Halloween, we are always slashing prices in these occasions. Sometimes prices would go down by 80 per cent. We get a lot of love from our users during this period.
The company decided to discontinue UPI payments recently, while it also had a credit services feature of upto ₹3 lakhs launched a couple of years ago. What’s the update on the financial services business, are you looking to expand?
We started our fintech play a few years ago as a pilot and we saw good results from that. So, we invested a lot more into that and wanted to see where it goes. While we were seeing good traction in the UPI payments, bill payments and the credit space, we realised that it was probably the wrong time for us because we started getting distracted from the core promise of what Truecaller stands for, to make communication experience better. That’s why in early-2021, we decided to defocus from fintech and we walked away from the entire UPI, P2P payments and credit opportunity. We are completely out of that business now.
Since two-thirds of your global active userbase comes from India, how do you see data localisation norms impacting your business overall?
We were one of the first companies that had localised their data in India many years ago, even before the conversation took place. We believe that citizen’s data should reside within the country. Therefore, all Indian users’ data is localised and we were the frontrunners of that.
The data protection laws are a welcome move. It is important that well-formed and well-articulated laws are put in place in India around data protection. Our DNA is Swedish and we have some of the strictest laws in the world applying to the company which is GDPR, we implemented it on day 1. We are extremely privacy conscious.
Is there a way to remove myself from the Truecaller database as a non-user, given that my friends and callers are able to track my workplace and other details without me being a direct user?
Yes, there is a way to remove yourself from Truecaller. That has been the way since day one. The delisting link is shared frequently on our social media handles and mentioned on our websites as well.
Privacy issue has been raised repeatedly in different quarters. how do you plan to address these concerns?
For many years now, there’s a common misconception that Truecaller sells your data. But we are totally the opposite of what people think we are. Truecaller is the most privacy conscious app you’ll find. We have never sold data and we have no plans to do that. We have a profitable company and we don’t need to sell data. Users trust us to protect them from various scams, unwanted calls, and harassment that takes place. We can’t break that trust.
We have come across misconceptions about Truecaller which we have been trying to clear. We have 300 million people who love us and use the app everyday, nearly 200 million of them are in India.
Truecaller started #ItsNotOkay campaign, will there be more such campaigns, are you looking to increase ad spends?
#ItsNotOkay was conceptualised a few years ago. We believe that women safety is a very important issue to address. We build features specifically around this. We had built a free product called Guardian, which doesn’t have advertising. It let’s you notify your loved ones in case of any moment of distress. This is a topic close to our hearts and we will continue to carry out campaigns to educate on women’s rights and how they can report to the right agencies. We chose Women’s Day month, to run this campaign every year and we will continue to invest in such programmes.
