Truecaller CEO warns TRAI 2025 rule worsens India's spam calls
Spam calls are blowing up phones all over India, and Truecaller CEO Rishit Jhunjhunwala says it's only getting worse.
The reason? A new Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) rule for 2025 forces businesses to use certain number series (140 and 1600) for telemarketing and finance-related calls.
Because of this, Truecaller can't flag these numbers as spam based on user reports, so a lot more annoying calls are slipping through.
Daily over 51 million spam calls unanswered
Thanks to the TRAI rule, more than 51 million spam calls from these numbers go unanswered every day. In just eight months, users have blocked a whopping 74 million numbers themselves.
Truecaller has tried to help by adding a "Frequently Blocked" badge for repeat offenders, but it still can't label them as spam directly.
Jhunjhunwala also pushed back against even stricter rules being discussed, saying they'd only help scammers and make things harder for everyone: he urged the ministry to make a data-driven decision and penalize bad actors.