Truecaller to foray into financial services in India

This year, the Swedish company started a pilot program in India to provide credit to small business owners.
Truecaller to foray into financial services in India
Truecaller to foray into financial services in India
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The Indian market with its millions of users is an attractive destination for any product/service. Most of the top apps like Facebook and WhatsApp have a majority of their membership base in this country. And the latest to take a closer look at the Indian market is Truecaller, the Swedish company that is more popular as the caller ID app on mobile phones. Truecaller now wants to offer lending services to Indian customers and has plans to go for listing its stock in the markets here, reports Bloomberg.

To begin with, Trucaller has already started funding some small business owners here through an arrangement with a finance partner. It will now start offering credit to the rest of its userbase as well by early next year.

Observers point out that China’s Tencent Holdings tried a similar route with its WeChat messaging service and then kept adding other services like dating service, payments and so on.

The company says 140 million, out of its 200 million subscribers, are in India.

The company employs around 230 people and more than half of them are located in India. Much of these details have been shared by the Chief Executive of the company, Alan Mamedi.

Truecaller has identified that around 20 million of its user base in India are small businesses and they are also the most under-serviced as far as the banking facilities are concerned. Truecaller wants to explore how it can fill that space. The caller ID service has a free and subscription model. The subscription revenue is supplemented by advertising within the app. The Swedish company expects to close the year with a revenue of $32 million. If it starts the fintech part of the business, the CEO says the revenue from all three streams, subscription, advertisements and fintech will be of equal proportions in about three years’ time. The app already has a mobile payments channel in its app.

Truecaller is also taking another initiative for the small businesses offering them the facility to create a page with their profile, their contact numbers, opening hours etc.

Truecaller has similar plans for some of the other emerging markets as well like Nigeria and some other African countries starting with the Truecaller Pay facility.

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