Truecaller has launched a public battle with India’s telecom regulator over guidelines governing caller ID apps, arguing the nation’s anti-spam framework makes it troublesome to guard shoppers from unsolicited calls in India’s largest market.
Wednesday, CEO Rishit Jhunjhunwala (pictured above) took me to X He accused the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) of stopping Truecaller from displaying spam data reported by the neighborhood about calls from the nation’s devoted quantity collection 1400 and 1600, arguing that the restriction enabled the misuse of those numbers and undermined belief in professional enterprise calls.
Conflicts stem from frameworks. introduced In 2024, the Telecom Authority of India designated the 1400 and 1600 quantity collection for business communications, with companies to make use of the previous for telemarketing calls and the latter for service and transaction-related calls. TRAI subsequently mandated the transfer to a devoted quantity collection, saying it will assist shoppers establish professional enterprise communications and curb spam and rip-off calls.
The framework comes amid rising considerations about spam and fraudulent calls in India, one of many world’s largest telecom markets, with regulators and carriers taking a number of measures to curb fraudulent communications. Final yr, the Indian Ministry of Telecommunications said The dimensions of the issue was highlighted final yr when authorities disconnected greater than 2.1 million fraudulent cell phone numbers and took motion towards greater than 100,000 companies.
Mr. Jhunjhunwala claimed that the coverage had produced unintended penalties. Citing inner information, he mentioned shoppers are more and more shedding belief in designated quantity collection, with Truecaller customers ignoring 81% of calls from the 1400 collection and 79% of calls from the 1600 collection over the previous eight months. Throughout the identical interval, customers manually blocked 74 million calls from the 2 quantity collection, however each day blocking operations towards numbers within the 1600 vary have greater than tripled since October 2025, he mentioned.
Truecaller is unable to mark these numbers as spam and has as a substitute launched a “Incessantly Blocked” badge that alerts customers if a given collection of numbers has been blocked by many individuals.
The weird public criticism got here after the Indian financial newspaper Financial Occasions. reported TRAI mentioned it had sought permission to take motion beneath India’s Info Expertise Act towards caller ID apps resembling Truecaller, Hiya and Whoscall that labeled specified 1400 and 1600 collection numbers as spam.
TRAI and India’s Ministry of Electronics and Info Expertise, which considers such proposals, didn’t reply to requests for remark.
The dispute comes at a important time for Truecaller, whose core caller ID enterprise is beneath growing regulatory and aggressive strain because it expands with new services and products. India stays the most important market by a large margin; Over 350 million In response to the corporate, there are 500 million month-to-month lively customers primarily based in Japan.
Jhunjhunwala mentioned Truecaller will share information with India’s IT Ministry as a part of the regulatory course of and argued that any selections relating to caller ID apps needs to be primarily based on proof.
“Unhealthy actors needs to be punished, not those that make a major constructive impression like Truecaller,” he wrote.
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