Last year it was reported that Truecaller — the popular, smart phonebook app and startup — was looking to raise $100 million at a $1 billion valuation. But while there has been no development on that front, the startup has been on a consolidation kick as it aims to become cash-flow positive. After confirming 30 layoffs in December, today the company announced that it is merging features of one of its apps, Truedialer, into its flagship Truecaller app — and shutting down Truedialer in the process.
Now in addition to existing caller ID options, Truecaller users will get features like smart call history, availability and a new dialer to make calls from within the Truecaller app.
Truecaller — which is available on iOS and Android — has not given a final closure date for Truedialer, an Android-only app. But it has started to prompt users to migrate to Truecaller today. Truecaller’s separate Android app for SMS — TrueMessenger — and its new SDK will remain unaffected.
The company said that the decision to phase out Truedialer was to enhance features in Truecaller, in part as a response to users.
It’s also the case that Truedialer was less popular than Truecaller. According to data from App Annie, in India — Truecaller’s biggest market — the flagship app is a steady presence in the top ten Google Play store. Truedialer, meanwhile, hovers in the 200’s. Truedialer’s last reported figure was over 10 million users as of April last year. Truecaller now has seen over 250 million downloads.
Truecaller aims to take over the default communications apps on your device by offering features such as spam detection, integrating social media into phonebook contacts, and more. It started out with a phonebook app (Truecaller) before adding Truedialer, a lighter incarnation to cater to a wider audience, in 2014. Truecaller has a global audience but counts the fast-moving, large mobile market of India as its largest market.
But while it’s been a longstanding strategy among app developers to grow user bases by expanding their app catalogues (see: Facebook and its army of apps like Messenger, WhatsApp and Instagram, all hugely popular in their own right outside of Facebook itself), it looks like Truecaller is taking a different route by enhancing its most popular app and cutting out some of the overlap among users.
This could also help Truecaller compete against bigger companies that offer competing services.
Both Facebook and Google are among those that have stepped into the ‘smart’ phone app space directly. Google’s own dialer app and a similar effort from Facebook could be seen as serious competition, but Mamedi claimed he sees these as an “energy boost”.