How Truecaller is using AI assistant to help you attend, or drop calls

Imagine, an assistant monitoring calls during your Zoom meeting and compiling a list of the numbers to glance at once you are in the headspace to deal with them. If this is what you desire, then Truecaller is working to make your wish come true.

In March 2022, Truecaller acquired Israel-based CallHero, which has developed a technical solution for both Android and iPhone that answers and analyses incoming calls with the help of an AI-based assistant—a Smart Agent. The feature will soon be launched in the US and India.

Considering the number of reports on spam calls in India, a voice assistant to filter them will be a huge step. According to Truecallers' 2021 global report, India was among the top five countries affected by the spam nuisance. In 2021, over 202 million spam calls were made by one spammer in India, which translates to 664,000 people being disturbed every day or 27,000 people every hour, that too, from a single phone number.

“We want to take away the pain of users taking calls, especially spam or fraud calls. We are always trying to explore ways to make sure consumers' lives are easier when dealing with spam and fraud calls. All of this further gets better the moment we add cloud into text apps,” said Rishit Jhunjhunwala, MD India, Truecaller.

Commenting that the cloud assist is just the starting point, Jhunjhunwala said, the company will be adding more features. As it launches in countries with several local dialects, India, is one example, natural language processing will also be a part of the application.

In terms of growth, Truecaller has witnessed growth across all segments in the country. The company, at present, has three revenue streams—advertisement, Truecaller Premium for individual users, and Truecaller for Business, which was launched in 2020.

The MD said that all three segments grew well in the last quarter.

“Truecaller for Business, since it was launched about 1.5 years ago, has seen the highest growth. Our customer base in this category has also increased. Last year in December, about 1,000 businesses were using our services, the majority of which are from India,” he added.

In the April-June quarter, the Swedish company said that sales in India were up 130 per cent to SEK 378.7 million.

The monthly active users grew 14 per cent to 235.5 million at the end of Q2. According to the firm, Truecaller’s daily active users were 194.4 million by the end of June 2022, up from 167.3 million in the year ago period.

“The consumer offering is by far the largest for us, as we have been in this for 13 years. But going forward, we want Truecaller for Business becoming a formidable number two in terms of revenue contribution. We are still very early in this space, but we see a high growth trajectory for this segment,” added Jhunjhunwala.

In terms of research and development, while India continues to be a major contributor in building products and features, Jhunjhunwala said that the company is also learning from other geographies.

“Every market that we enter is significantly different from each other. One is the consumer behaviour and the behaviour of spammers and scammers which differs according to the country,” he added.

For instance, In India, KYC scams are very prevalent, whereas Egypt has completely different types of scams. In the US, IRS scams are more common. Not just these, the spammer technologies also tend to vary, based on the country and its legislation. For example, robo calls are a menace in the US, but that is not the case in India and many other emerging markets.