Truecaller has entered a public dispute with India’s telecom regulator over the country’s anti-spam rules, arguing that restrictions on caller ID services are making it harder to protect consumers from unwanted calls in the company’s largest market.
On Wednesday, Truecaller CEO Rishit Jhunjhunwala publicly challenged the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), accusing the regulator of preventing the company from displaying community-reported spam information for calls made from India’s designated 1400 and 1600 number series. Jhunjhunwala said the restriction has allowed misuse of the numbering system and reduced consumer confidence in legitimate business communications.
The disagreement centers on a regulatory framework introduced in 2024, when Indian telecom authorities designated the 1400 and 1600 number series for commercial communications. Under the system, businesses use the 1400 series for telemarketing calls, while the 1600 series is intended for service-related and transaction-related communications.
TRAI later required businesses to migrate to the dedicated number series, saying the move would help consumers identify genuine business calls and reduce spam and fraudulent communications. The policy was introduced as India’s telecom sector faced increasing concerns over unwanted calls and scams across one of the world’s largest mobile markets.
Indian authorities have taken multiple measures to address fraudulent communications. Last year, the Ministry of Communications said regulators had disconnected more than 2.1 million fraudulent mobile numbers and taken action against more than 100,000 entities during the previous year.
Jhunjhunwala said the numbering framework has had unintended effects, citing internal Truecaller data showing declining consumer trust in the designated series. He said users ignored 81% of calls from the 1400 series and 79% of calls from the 1600 series over an eight-month period.
During the same period, Truecaller users manually blocked 74 million calls from the two number series, according to Jhunjhunwala. He added that daily blocking activity against 1600-series numbers had more than tripled since October 2025.
Because Truecaller is unable to label calls from those numbers as spam, the company introduced a “Frequently Blocked” badge to notify users when a number from the designated series has been blocked by a large number of people.
The public criticism followed a report by Indian business newspaper The Economic Times that TRAI had sought powers under India’s Information Technology Act to take action against caller ID applications, including Truecaller, Hiya and Whoscall, for marking numbers from the 1400 and 1600 series as spam.
TRAI and India’s Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, which would evaluate any such proposal, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The dispute comes as Truecaller faces increased regulatory and competitive pressure while expanding beyond its traditional caller identification services. India remains the company’s largest market, accounting for more than 350 million of its 500 million monthly active users, according to the company.
Jhunjhunwala said Truecaller would provide its data to India’s IT ministry as part of the regulatory process, arguing that decisions affecting caller ID services should be based on evidence. He called for action against misuse of communication systems while defending the role of services that help consumers identify unwanted calls.
