Truecaller’s Alan Mamedi sees India’s data protection law positively; open to acquire more local startups

Complying to the proposed law will not affect the experience of Truecaller in the country, he said, terming the move positive for the country.

Mamedi said that Truecaller is open to the possibility of making investments or even acquiring startups in India.

“It is positive and it is where the world is headed. We started the company in Sweden which has one of the hardest laws in the world. A lot of countries are looking at Sweden and we applied that philosophy to our product,” he said, adding that Truecaller pro-actively opted for data localisation way back in 2018.

Mamedi, who is in India currently, said that the company is spending a lot of time allaying misconceptions around Truecaller and its origins in the country. “We are more Indian than most of the Indian companies. We have our entity here and we have more employees here, we pay taxes and are our Indian operations.”

The top executive said that the data protection law will not impact the company’s growth trajectory in India due to the proposed stringent privacy and consent clauses.

Discover the stories of your interest

“I think the biggest challenge for companies will be how to localise, move all servers and infrastructure to India. We did it in 2018. We want to improve the experience by bringing machines closer to the users.’Another reason was that since we are in the business of trust, for us it felt like an addition to that…That we are having the data closer to you is the stance we took as a company as well,” Mamedi said.

India is the largest market for Truecaller with over 220 million active users. The country accounts for as much as 70% of the company’s global active user base of 300 million. In the last two years, Truecaller hired 100 employees in India to take the overall strength to 170. Globally, it will employ 100-150 employees this year.

”We are a full stack organisation in India right from design, to engineering, data science, quality assurance, marketing,” Rishit Jhunjhunwala, Chief Product Officer and Managing Director, Truecaller India said.

Mamedi said that Truecaller is open to the possibility of making investments or even acquiring startups in India. “if we find something that is interesting for us then we might make an investment or even an acquisition.”

Truecaller has so far acquired two companies in India MessAI and chillr. Both MessAI and chillr’s technologies now power Truecaller’s smart sms.

Mamedi in his personal capacity has made a couple of investments in India. “I don’t publicly talk about which companies because I want to focus on the founders. I am personally interested in it and mentoring a couple of entrepreneurs in India,”