Truecaller announces $18.8M led by Sequoia Capital,and tie up With Yelp to support building the world largest verified mobile phone community
New Delhi, India, February 8, 2014: Truecaller, the world’s largest verified mobile phone community today officially announces that an investor group led by Sequoia Capital has invested $18.8M in the company in a Series B round of financing. Also participating in the funding is existing investor Open Ocean, Truecaller Chairman Stefan Lennhammer, and a private investor who is known for his high profile Silicon Valley investments.
Truecaller is a Stockholm-based company with more than 45 million users who currently utilize the service to block spam calls to their mobile phones and help identify unknown phone numbers. As part of the company’s ongoing commitment to expand its list of product features, the company is also announcing an integration of Yelp API data as part of its new product launch on Android and iOS, which allows users to identify millions of reviewed businesses globally. The new Truecaller release incorporates new social features to make it even easier to update contacts and get in touch with ‘people you may know.’
“Truecaller is among the most engaging applications in many high growth smartphone markets, as it helps make users more efficient in avoiding spam calls and know who is calling them. We are excited to help support the company’s growing user community,” says Shailesh Lakhani, Sequoia Capital, who has joined the board at Truecaller.
Truecaller Adds Yelp Integration and Crowdsourced Data to Help You Screen and Identify Incoming Calls
The Truecaller community is committed to protecting the integrity of the service by giving users access to advanced discovery features such as the ability to search for names, use reverse phone number lookup, share information, and access crowdsourced data to build the world’s largest list of top phone spammers, which has already helped block more than 1 billion unwanted calls in less than a year.
With Truecaller, when a number that you do not know calls your phone, you can quickly look to see who the caller is, and if it has been marked as spam by other users. Any user can report a caller as spam to enhance the community, and after successive reports within a defined period, that number will be permanently blocked by the community. When you download the app, you also have the option to automatically block all numbers on Truecaller’s top spammers list built by the Truecaller community.
With Yelp integration, Truecaller users can now identify local, national, and international businesses, and also view their Yelp rating. This integration takes Truecaller’s own search engine to find people and identify numbers, and combines it with Yelp’s crowdsourced business ratings to create one place for genuine and accurate information for the world to use. The ability for users to take advantage of Yelp’s local listings follows on a major partnership that Truecaller forged with Twitter to allow users to tweet and follow other users directly through the Truecaller app.
Truecaller co-founder and CEO Alan Mamedi said, “2013 was an amazing year for Truecaller and our latest partnership with Yelp expands the value of our service to millions of new users. With Sequoia, we have a partner who truly shares our vision, and together we look forward to continued innovation and global expansion by creating a helpful service that the entire world can use confidently.”
To take part in Truecaller’s growing community, you can download the app today for free on popular platforms including iOS, Android, BlackBerry, Windows Phone, and Symbian.
