Truecaller brings call recording and transcription to India

Caller identity company Truecaller has launched its call recording and transcription for paid users in India, the company’s biggest market. The recording feature will be available to premium users on both Android and iOS, with support for English and Hindi transcriptions.

In June 2023, the company introduced call recording for premium users in the U.S., and now it is expanding the feature in India. The key distinction is that because of the regulations, in the U.S. receivers would hear a beep sound when a user begins recording. That won’t be the case in India.

If you are using Truecaller on Android, the app’s own dialer will show a dedicated recording button. For other dialers, Truecaller will show a floating recording button.

On iOS, the process is a bit different due to Apple’s CallKit restrictions. If you want to record incoming or outgoing calls, you will have to go to the Truecaller app after initiating the call and tap on the “Record a call” feature located in the search tab. The app calls another recording line, and then you will have to manually merge the calls to start the recording.

Once the call is over, the app processes the audio and sends a notification when transcription is ready. On iOS, the recordings are stored locally, with an option to store them in iCloud.

Truecaller has had a few tough quarters. According to its Q4 2023 results, the company garnered $41.14 million in revenue, with a 4% decrease year-on-year. The company’s yearly revenue for 2023 was $167.34 million — a dip of 2% year-on-year. On the back of these results, Truecaller’s stocks have dropped by more than 15% year-to-date.

The bright spot was that its monthly active users grew by 11% to 374 million and daily active users grew by 12% to 305 million. The user base in India represents more than 70% of both. While the dip in ad revenues was the contributor to the overall revenue decline, the company’s user revenues grew by more than 20% in Q4.

Truecaller is hopeful that customers will be encouraged to buy the premium plan, which starts at ₹79 ($0.95) per month or ₹529 per year ($6.38), with features like call recording.

Last week, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) published recommendations for a caller ID service called calling name presentation (CNAP) on top of cell networks. Truecaller said that it didn’t see the service as competitive.

In an investor note, stockbroker Numis recently noted that Truecaller might not see any rapid improvements in the Indian ad market. It said the company is pressing on growing subscriber revenue.

“We think Truecaller has started spending extra to grow subscribers mainly in the US, and ad-funded users mainly in selected markets in LatAm & Africa,” Numis said in the note.

“Truecaller’s data & iOS product are now appropriately good to serve US subscribers well; US price points are high, and more of the US population than, say, that in India is used to paying monthly for services. Extra spend to quicken growth in ad-funded users in a market does not exceed revenue earned there.”