On Tuesday, Truecaller, one of the world's largest incoming caller ID service providers, announced it has surpassed the milestone of 200 million monthly active users, proving its ability to turn a profit more and more.
In India alone, Truecaller's largest market, 150 million people use the service every month. The Swedish firm is well ahead of Seattle-based main competitor Hiya, which had about 100 million users as of October last year.
And unlike its competitors, Truecaller has gone beyond call identification and spam monitoring services. In recent years, the company has introduced messaging and payment features in some markets. Both are growing in popularity, according to Truecaller co-founder and chief executive Alan Mamedi.
The payment service is currently only available in India, but will soon expand to select African markets. Also in a few weeks, Truecaller plans to offer credit services in the Indian market, where there are many startups that offer payment services to users. Dozens of firms, including Truecaller and giants like Alibaba's Paytm and Walmart's PhonePe, have deployed payment services in the country built on top of the government-backed UPI infrastructure developed by a banking group.
The uniqueness of Truecaller is in low costs. Mr. Mamedi said that the quarter ended in December was profitable for Truecaller: "We are very proud of this fact, especially in an industry where most companies spend heavily on their users." Truecaller has raised about $99 million to date, according to Crunchbase, and its investors include Sequoia Capital and Kleiner Perkins.
Truecaller gets over half of its revenue from advertising. But Alan Mamedi said that the subscription service, which offers a number of additional features, including the removal of ads, is gaining more acceptance from users. Today, it generates about 30% of all Truecaller's revenues.
The startup will try to maintain this momentum, but the chief executive warned that everything could change depending on the decisions made on the development of the business: for example, in the event of a takeover of start-up companies. An initial public offering is just around the corner, but the executive noted that it will take the company two years to prepare for this stage of its journey.
Source: 3dnews.ru