Truecaller Acquires Indian Firm Chillr; Launches Truecaller Pay 2.0
Last year in March, Truecaller had announced its foray into the digital payments segment, incorporating UPI-based transfers in its app. The Stockholm-based company that identifies spam calls and helps in speedy mobile communication, announced a strategic investment into the payment space in India by acquiring Chillr, India’s first multi-bank payments app launched in 2014. This move also means Truecaller is now set to take on WhatsApp Payments in India.
The founders of Chillr, Sony Joy, Anoop Sankar, Mohamed Galib and Lishoy Bhaskaran and the rest of the organization will be joining Truecaller, and Sony Joy will be the Vice President of Truecaller Pay. Chillr’s team of engineers and designers have a profound understanding of mobile payments, and a deep passion for products that they will now bring to Truecaller. The company plans to leverage its full reach of over 150 million users in India as well as its 300+ existing partnerships in India to enable Truecaller Pay as a platform.
“Since launching Truecaller Pay in 2017, we’ve seen an increasing number of use cases to make the lives of our users in India easier. By acquiring Chillr, we are reaffirming our commitment to mobile payments and strengthening our plans to increase its adoption amongst our user base. We will, together, have a far bigger impact in this space through the foundation of the team’s expertise and a strong user base thattrust our platform and use it on a daily basis.” Truecaller Co-founder & Chief Strategy Officer, Nami Zarringhalam told CXOToday.
Spam calls are on the rise than ever before, according to a study that revesls that Indians received maximum spam calls in 2017 out of a research done on 20 countries. The study done by Truecaller, a telephone directory app which has over 250 million users around the world, reveals that India slides in first with the average Truecaller user receiving 22.6 spam calls per month.
“After spending time with the founders and the Truecaller team, we have realized that we share a lot of synergies; values; culture; and a sharp focus on user experience. Our roadmap on payments and financial services which when combined with the scale and resources of Truecaller, can create amazing experiences and solve genuine problems at an accelerated pace,” said Sony Joy, Co-founder, Chillr.
The payments app Chillr was seeing good growth with IMPS transfers as it didn’t have much competition. The company is said to be up for sale since last year. HDFC Bank was one of Chillr’s biggest partners even though, it did not get much attention from other major banks. Now it is expected to get a much bigger platform.
With the launch of Truecaller Pay 2.0, the company has brought banking and payments features to the forefront of its app, and in the coming months Truecaller is planning on rolling out credit and other financial services to users in Indiain a mobile-first way.
