Truecaller crosses 200M monthly users, targets IPO in three years
Truecaller has expanded from caller identification to communication, payments, money transfers, etc. It turned profitable in 2019.
Phonebook and caller identification app Truecaller has hit 200 million monthly active users (MAUs) globally. It also turned profitable in the last four months, and continued to grow its revenues at 70 percent, the company announced.
India continues to be Truecaller's largest market with 150 million MAUs. Truecaller Premium has already crossed one million subscribers in India, and is projected to grow by 50 percent in coming months.
Truecaller's growth here is driven by India's large smartphone population and the diversification of the service from just caller identification to a one-stop communication platform with offerings such as VoIP, instant messaging, UPI money transfers, and more.
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The Swedish company has identified India as "the home market for the brand".
Sandeep Patil, Managing Director, Truecaller, said,
“We will continue to grow revenues through investments in advertisement, subscriptions, credit and financial services. We will Make in India for India by recruiting talent across technology, product management, data sciences, and finance and by developing partnerships across the ecosystem."
Patil added, "This is a concrete milestone on our path to build a financially-sustainable independent company that will be ready for IPO in three years.”
Besides the array of services it already offers in India, Truecaller revealed plans to launch digital money lending "within the first quarter of this year'.
Alan Mamedi and Nami Zarringhalam, Truecaller co-founders
Alan Mamedi, Co-Founder and CEO, Truecaller said in a prior interaction,
“In emerging markets, we’re seeing the importance of smartphones in people’s daily lives. It’s their primary gateway to the internet… Truecaller is more than just an app on your phone, it has aided in bridging the digital divide between the urban and growing semi-urban/rural markets in India, and has even enabled more African businesses to accept online payment.”
The company is ramping its business portfolio with Truecaller for Business – a product aimed at SMEs and SMBs – which allows entrepreneurs to discover nearby users through the Truecaller app. It is also revamping Truecaller Priority that lets users identify relevant calls from businesses, and weeds out the spam calls.
Spam calls have been a consistent problem. In fact, India was the world's fifth-most spam affected country in 2019, Truecaller in had revealed in its Global Insights Report.
"With the rise of mobile payment systems and a growing middle class in the India, banks, fintech organisations, and telemarketing services are emerging as big spammers," the company stated in the report.
(Edited by Saheli Sen Gupta)
