Why is Truecaller tracing its connection with seat belts and pacemakers?

What’s common between a car’s seat belt and leading caller ID app Truecaller? They’re both of Swedish origin. This bit of information is also a key part of the brand’s ongoing ad campaign, ‘Hello India’.

As a part of this OOH initiative, Truecaller is also telling the consumers that it shares its origin with other world-changing inventions, like the pacemaker and mobile handsets.

But why?

In conversation with afaqs!, Manan Shah, director of marketing, Truecaller India, says that the campaign is a part of an ongoing effort to get people to know the brand better. He explains that it is really important to get the consumers to know the brand, apart from just its functional benefits.

“There are so many apps that we have on our phone, and Truecaller happens to be one of the most used. But many times, the users don’t know much about the brand and the app that they are using. We’ve been trying to get the consumers to know us better. This also helps in eliminating misinformation.”

The campaign has been crafted by Thinkstr, Truecaller’s creative agency on record (AOR). The ads have been put up across locations in Delhi NCR. The idea came out of the need to showcase the brand’s association with a certain culture of doing things and solving problems.

Speaking on the choice of OOH, Shah says that the medium has its own share of visibility and attention. It is also relatively uncluttered, as compared to the digital medium.

Truecaller’s previous OOH campaign, ‘It’s Not Ok’ around ‘women’s safety’, was well received, and the creatives went viral across social media. The campaign, in a way, became the brand’s new playbook.

“Marketers need to re-enable traditional mediums. The newspaper and OOH ad are in an uncluttered space. They might be a bit more expensive than digital, but are able to create that clutter breaking feel that all marketers talk about.”

Truecaller currently has around 200 million active users. Of these, around 1.6 million are premium subscribers. It ranks among the top three in the communication section on Google Play Store, just after WhatsApp and WhatsApp Business. Shah reveals that the platform onboards a daily average of 400-500 thousand new users.

“We have been financially profitable for months now and have never been worried about growth. Our growth has been healthy and organic. That’s an enviable position for most platforms. Most of our efforts are focused on ensuring a good experience for the users,” Shah mentions.

Last year, Truecaller introduced its ‘Call Reason’ feature, based on a social media demand. The feature allows the users to tell the reason behind the call to the person at the other end of the line. This lets the users judge the importance of the call – if it’s work-related, or urgent.

But getting hold of new users is only one bit of the success. While Truecaller has a really strong core caller ID product, it needs newer monetisation avenues.

Most of the money on the platform comes from advertising, followed by subscriptions. The platform explored payments as a new area, but it was shelved earlier this year. The platform is continuing its lending tech experiment with loans.

It recently launched its enterprise business, i.e., Verified Business Caller ID. With this, calls from brands get a verified business badge on Truecaller, along with the brand logo on caller ID.

The customer base of the enterprise business is currently 300, and includes brands like Udaan, Ajio, Unacademy and WhiteHat Jr. Shah says that the platform is currently onboarding around 100 customers every month.

“We did try our hands at UPI-based payments, but decided to pull the plug on it at the beginning of this year. While we were growing well, it did not make sense for the long-term plan. There is already a lot of fintech players out there,” Shah signs off.