How did you start out as entrepreneurs?
When the first generation of smartphones was introduced to the market, we early on understood that the new technology would open up enormous possibilities for new services. We began to dream about creating something useful for the users, something with a real purpose that would make everyday life easier for as many people as possible.
So Truecaller was your first try?
Not at all. We have always asked ourselves what would be useful for us, in the current situation we are in. Back then, we had to get furniture for our first apartments and had a hard time finding interiors that were both cheap and unique. So the first business we started was a search engine for home interior. The second one was a site for reviewing employers – simply because we were looking for work and thought it would be handy to get a review of the boss before he or she became our boss.
Why did you start Truecaller?
Well, we struggled quite a bit with getting our first business to grow and realized that the Swedish market was too small. So whatever our next endeavor would be it had to be on a global market. Not long after the new requirement was set, we discovered there was no ”global yellow pages”. But the need to be able to identify incoming calls is the same everywhere. And the rest is history.
Jumping five years into the future, where do you see Truecaller then?
Since the start in 2009, Truecaller has evolved from being only a caller id and spam blocking app, to more of a financial platform and a secure way to make digital payments. Emerging markets lead the way. In these parts of the world, Truecaller already functions as a way for customers to verify that someone is credible. In India, for example, we see that more and more women only gets into a cab if the driver is Truecaller verified.
