Swedish caller ID firm Truecaller has set up its first Africa office and headquarters for the region in Kenya. The firm’s regional activities will now be run from Nairobi
The software application, popular with helping identify unknown phone numbers, has garnered six million users in the country to date.
“Over the years, Kenya has consistently been a top market for us, with some of our highest usage globally, which is why it made sense for us to set up a strategic headquarters in Nairobi. With this positive momentum of growth, we look forward to bringing new, innovative and localized services and offerings, and expand our presence and start engaging more deeply with the tech ecosystem,” said the firm’s director of partnerships, Africa, Zakaria Hersi on Wednesday.
Last year, the app released statistics indicating that Truecaller is blocking and filtering out more than 4.4 million calls and 14 million spam SMS’s on a monthly basis in the country.
Of the calls, 91 percent were flagged as scams, 4 percent as a nuisance and 5 percent were from financial services. In Africa, Truecaller has an estimated 50 million users with Kenya, Nigeria, and South Africa being named as key markets.
According to Zakaria Abdulkadir, Kenya is TrueCaller’s largest market in Africa and the company will use the Nairobi headquarters to run operations in Nigeria and South Africa, other key markets in the region.
“Kenya is the top African market for the app, top five globally. 6 million active users are in Kenya, and 4.4million calls are blocked per month. Women report 11 percent more unwanted calls than men.” From being popularly known as ‘phone number search app’ in 2015 to a ‘mobile identity’ platform in 2018, Truecaller has evolved.
India was a key trigger to the company, where it has launched some exclusive offerings such as payment integration and offline search. Early this year, Truecaller announced that it will soon be launching a backup feature to help people retain their data when switching to a new phone, getting new SIM cards or resetting their device
