How Truecaller found its calling in India without any publicity

By Rohan Abraham

Unwanted calls and random text messages seem to come at all hours. They bug you at work, ruin your family time and wake you up when you are fast asleep. In 2009, the founders of Truecaller decided to build a software based on the simple premise of helping users in their native Sweden block unwanted calls. Within a week of debuting on the App Store, its subscriber count in India stood in excess of 1.5 million, surpassing the population of Stockholm. “We managed to succeed in India without any promotion. India found us. It turned out that spam calls are a global problem. Efficiency is a universal language,” said Alan Mamedi, CEO, Truecaller.

He added that the Stockholm-headquartered company managed to get a foothold in India without spending on publicity.

“It is a misconception that you need to build the next iPhone for your company to scale rapidly. If you have an idea that can help people save time — be it in communication, transportation, healthcare or food delivery — you can achieve scale,” Mamedi said.