Can Truecaller weather India's CNAP plan?

With 70% of its business coming from India, the Swedish caller ID services company faces uncertainty as the country moves ahead with Calling Name Presentation

- V&D BUREAU

On 23 February, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) released a set of recommendations for introducing caller identification as a default feature in Indian telecom networks. The recommendations offered a look at not just how the feature would work but also put up for debate conversations around what would happen to one particular company-Sweden-headquartered caller and spam identification service, Truecaller..

The reason for this is very simple-last year, Truecaller earned USD 167.9 million in annual revenue, of which India contributed USD 126.4 million-just over 75%. In terms of the firm's user base, at the end of December last year, Truecaller had 374.1 million users, of which 266.2 million or over 71% came from India. This makes the business over-reliant on India; without its business here, Truecaller's annual revenue will only be a fraction of what it is right now.

WHAT TRUECALLER BRINGS TO THE TABLE

Truecaller's active user base ropes in approximately one in every three smartphone users in India on average, making the app one of the most popular mobile applications across Indian phones. This, however, comes with a caveat.

Truecaller has attempted to expand to offer a wide range of features, including establishing a social medialike ability for users to comment on certain numbers or even look others up. While this would have otherwise been good, the company continues to be identified as a caller identification service provider only.