Caller ID service provider, Truecaller has entered a series of partnerships to increase its value to customers. The Sweden-based startup announced its collaborations with Google, Airtel and ICICI bank at a press event held in India today.
Not just wanting to be known as an app that helps people identify callers, it is making its move to become a platform.
Its partnership with Google will see the app see Google’s video calling feature, Duo, integrated into the Truecaller app.
“Video calling should work for everybody, regardless of what platform they are on. Our aim is to make video calling simple, fast, and available to everyone,” said Amit Fulay, Head of Duo at Google. “With this Truecaller integration, we’re able to bring a better video calling experience to millions of new users.”
Truecaller integration with Google Duo will be available in the coming months for Android and iOS as a permission-based service, where users will be able to opt-in and out at any time.
Truecaller also announced a partnership with Airtel in India to extend Truecaller’s Caller ID to Airtel’s feature phones, even those without a data connection. With this integration, callers will be identified from Truecaller’s database, and this information will be sent to the customers via a Flash SMS before the call hits the users’ phone.
This new functionality will be offered as a subscription-based service to help end-users avoid unwanted spam calls without having to get a smartphone or a data service. Named “Airtel Truecaller ID”, the service will be rolling out in April across India, and all feature phone users with Airtel mobile services will be able to subscribe to this feature.
Truecaller’s tie-in with ICICI bank of India will enable peer-to-peer payments between Truecaller users. ICICI bank will provide the technology behind this service. The bank holds the requisite licenses for the service and is using India’s UPI payment system to enable it. Truecaller Pay will open to users of any bank in India, both parties said.
“India has played an important role for the innovation we bring to our users. As our product has matured, so has India as a market which made it more organic than ever to build more meaningful services on top of Truecaller,” Alan Mamedi, Truecaller CEO and co-founder said in a statement in TechCrunch.
Along with news of these partnerships, Truecaller announced a completely new redesign of the Android app, and now with a broader array of useful features including:
* SMS: Instantly see who’s SMS’ing you and filter out all spam messages. Spam SMS account for 15% of all SMS messages sent globally, and represents 1.2 trillion spam messages each year.
* Flash Messaging: which allows you to send quick pre-defined messages to any Truecaller user to let them know if you’re in distress, you’re on your way, your location, or that you’ve reached home.
Truecaller currently has over 150 million subscribers in India and is obviously trying to fend off competition from the likes of Whatsapp which has about 200 million subscribers in the same country.
“If we are able to find success with these kinda of services [in India], then we could replicate a similar model in other markets,” Kim Fai Kok, director of communications at Truecaller, told TechCrunch. “There are big opportunities in markets like Kenya and Nigeria, [but] we need to focus and make sure we get the first rollout right.”
