Truecaller, the caller identification application, may have been born in Sweden, but its largest market is thousands of kilometres away in India. Alan Mamedi and Nami Zarringhalam, the founders of Truecaller, zeroed in on the country right from the beginning. One of the earliest versions of the application was built to be compatible with Symbian, the mobile operating system from Nokia that had the largest user base in the country then.
"It was a large opportunity and we saw a need for the product here. So, we focused on India rather than other markets." Mamedi told ET. That decision shows up in numbers. Out of its 40 million users globally, 22 million are based in India and account for a quarter of all smartphone users in the country.
Last week venture capital firm Sequoia's India arm invested $18.8 million in a second round of funding in the company.
"Truecaller is among the most engaging applications in many high growth smartphone markets, as it helps make users more efficient in avoiding spam calls and know who is calling them. We are excited to help support the company's growing user community," said Shailesh Lakhani, principal at Sequoia Capital India, who has joined Truecaller's board.
Manmedi said his company has been talking to Sequoia India since 2012. "And they would tell us, 'You're not a Swedish startup. You're an Indian startup,'" he said.
Truecaller lets users look up the owner of a phone number. So if someone gets a missed call from a number they do not identify, they can search on the Truecaller app or its website to see the owner of that number. Being able to know who a missed call was from was the reason the founders created the application while they were studying at the Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden.
However, every time a user downloads the app and enables a function called "enhanced search" the numbers in the individual's phone become part of a publicly searchable database without the consent of those who own those numbers.
"If I were doing Truecaller business in India, I would send a notification to everyone whose number was added to the database. It's a good marketing exercise, and also legally, gives them a good defence," said Naavi Vijayashankar, a cyberlaw expert and author of the first book on cyber laws in India titled "Cyber Laws for Every Netizen in India".
Mamedi, who says that the thing he likes best about India is the food, hopes to use some of the funding to expand its base in the country. "We started our office in Delhi last year. And we have one business development manager. We hope that will go to more cities and hire more people," he said.
Last July, Truecaller tied up with Innoz, a mobile and wireless services company, to create an SMS-based service to enable nonsmartphone users identify unknown numbers.
It also tied up with Twitter to allow users to look up numbers that may be linked to Twitter accounts. That service was first launched here as well.