Cape Town, SOUTH AFRICA – November 8th 2017 – Truecaller held an exclusive event in Cape Town today where they invited selected media for a briefing on their plans for the region. The company revealed it will be setting up headquarters in the region and hire key personals for its operations. During the event they also launched its Developer Program with Truecaller SDK, its mobile identity product for digital start-ups and app developers, and announced that they will be doubling down on its monetization initiative in South Africa.
Truecaller SDK enables 3rd party app developers, digital businesses and startups to verify end users quickly and frictionlessly by utilizing their Truecaller profile with a one touch and password free experience. The Truecaller SDK is available on Android, iOS and web platforms and can be used by any app or a website to instantly onboard, autofill user information, or verify the user’s phone number based identity through users’ consent.
Truecaller has become one of the fastest growing consumer apps in Africa, and has consistently been topping the App Store Charts across the continent for the past two years. Recently the company were both nominated as the “Most Innovative Service” by AfricaCom, and “Best African App” by AppsAfrica.
The Truecaller app, which allows people to see who’s calling and filter out spam calls and SMS, has already more than 50 million users in Africa. The service is identifying more than half a billion calls on a monthly basis in the region, and 50 percent of all SMS users receives is considered as spam.
The company also revealed that it has more than 3.2 million users in South Africa, where the user base has grown with over 120 percent over the past year. The Truecaller app is blocking more than 12 million calls, and 21.5 million spam SMS on a monthly basis in the country.
“Over the past 12-months South Africa has excelled all countries in the region, becoming the fastest growing market for us in the continent. With the positive momentum of growth and recent acknowledgements, we are confident this is the right timing for us to expand our presence and start engaging more deeply with the ecosystem.” said Ted Nelson, Chief Commercial Officer at Truecaller.
In a recent study conducted by Truecaller, South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya and Egypt rank among the top 20 countries in the world being plagued by unwanted spam calls.