Truecaller sees Indian user base doubling by 2026

India, which is Truecaller’s biggest market, is home to around 248 mn of its 338 mn global monthly active user base

Sweden’s Truecaller, which helps people identify incoming calls from unknown numbers, expects its user base in India to nearly double in the next three years, its chief executive said at the inauguration of its largest office outside Stockholm in Bengaluru on Thursday.

India, which is Truecaller’s biggest market, is home to around 248 million of its 338 million global monthly active user base. Since its entry in 2009, it has grown to become India’s largest caller-ID platform, boasting of partnerships with businesses and government agencies alike. One hindrance to its growth has been user privacy concerns.

“Today, we have around 55 per cent of connected smartphones in India using our service, more or less every day. So, in three years, if we just continue to evolve as we're doing and grow as we do, we should be at around 400 or 500 million,” said the Sequoia-backed company’s co-founder and chief executive officer, Alan Mamedi.

Industry experts agreed.

“TrueCaller is the largest service of its kind, with limited competition. In companies with such entrenched network effects, growth is almost linearly correlated to expansion in the marketplace. India’s smartphone user base is expected to grow to 1 billion by 2026 and TrueCaller will benefit directly from that growth,” said Utkarsh Sinha, Managing Director of boutique advisory firm Bexley Advisors.

“The key red flag in TrueCaller’s growth story appears to be from a regulatory perspective: the company gets to collect a tremendous amount of data on call patterns in India which could be considered sensitive from a protectionist perspective. As long as they steer clear of the regulatory hurdles, they shall benefit from the secular growth trends India is likely to see,” he said.

While the company did see user growth and ad revenues slow down in the most recent quarter, Mamedi was optimistic about seeing “positive trends” for its paid subscriptions and business offerings. “We do believe that all the revenue streams will continue to grow, we do see great potential in Truecaller for business,” he said.