Thiruvananthapuram: The recent Facebook data breach revelation is a wake-up call as well as a warning bell for all the technological firms, says Nami Zarringhalam, co-founder of TrueCaller, the first Caller ID and number lookup service in the world.
Headquartered in Stockholm, TrueCaller has just 96 employees, but nearly 25 crore users have downloaded and registered with the app the so far.
Zarringhalam, who is in the state capital to attend the two-day 'Huddle Kerala' conclave, speaks on consumer data privacy issues and his company’s future plans in an exclusive interview.
Excerpts:
How important is your business in India?
India accounts for approximately 15 crore of our total 25 crore users. It was the reason why we established our first office outside our headquarters in India. We have positioned the Indian market as a priority. If we fail to develop an effective marketing strategy here, we will have to take a relook at our entire business plan and see where the strategy needs changes.
What is your take on the reported Facebook data leak?
Facebook’s philosophy is to grow at any cost. We don’t want to make money by sharing sensitive personal data of our users with third parties. For us, privacy of each of our customer is sacrosanct. We don’t harvest data from users without their permission.
The European Parliament has adopted the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Do you think such regulatory changes could affect your business?
Not at all. We will have to reassess our private policy. It is important for companies to lay emphasis on self-regulation. They should move away from the wrong notion that user data could be compromised to make money. As part of meeting the EU's new GDPR privacy rules, we appointed a special team last year to study business processes that need to be put in place.
What makes the TrueCaller business model stand out? Do you share personal information of users with third parties?
Advertising revenue is our main source of income. Being a digital publishing software solution, it also expands the scope of our business. I can assure that we will never share personal data of our users with third parties. We have forged strategic tie-ups some major tech firms including Google, but there is no data sharing agreement between us.
It is learned that TrueCaller's priority list includes women safety…
A recent survey has found that 1 out of 3 (36%) women in India receives sexual and inappropriate calls or SMS. Of those, about 78 per cent of the
female mobile phone users in India receive sexual and inappropriate calls at least once a week. On average, women in India report or block 17 per cent more unwanted calls than men, the survey showed.
What are TrueCaller’s future plans?
We will be launching the revamped Unified Payment Interface-based mobile payment service in India next week. We are the first international company to launch UPI-based payments last year in March. We already have this for over a year now. The new version will have a lot of new features and simplified interface. It will allow users to create their unique Virtual Payment Address within the app and instantly send or receive money through UPI-supported banks in the country.