Truecaller, which helps people take the right call, nnounced that an investor group led by Atomico, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB), Sequoia Capital, Jerry Murdock (co-founder of Insight Venture Partners) and Stefan Lennhammer has invested $60 million in the company. This Series C round of financing will be used to fuel product development, hire new talent and expand the company’s global footprint.
The company also announced that John Doerr, partner at KPCB, Mattias Ljungman, managing partner at Atomico, and investor Jerry Murdock will be joining Truecaller’s board to further help shape the strategic direction of the companAy. Atomico founder and Skype co-founder Niklas Zennström will also join the board as a special adviser.
“Truecaller is solving a major pain point among smartphone owners who are looking for a better way to manage their contacts and always have the right information they need to stay connected,” said Niklas Zennström of Atomico. “It is great to see a team from Sweden that’s re-thinking how we communicate and scaling their technology globally. We look forward to working with the team to help them reach the next 100 million users,” continued Zennström.
With over 200,000 new users joining daily, the company is seeing a tremendous growth in emerging markets such as, India, the Middle East, Brazil and Africa. In addition to its growing user base, Truecaller has seen a significant increase in name and number searches on its platform. It has nearly doubled from about 800 million searches a month just six months ago to more than 1.5 billion searches a month today.
“Truecaller has maintained rapid organic growth in many fast growing smartphone markets, a rare feat in the mobile app world,” said Shailesh Lakhani of Sequoia Capital. “We are excited to participate in this new funding round to help execute on an ambitious product roadmap and even faster growth path.”
“In a time in which all of us live on our mobile devices, Truecaller is building a more powerful and intelligent mobile phone experience for people around the world,” said KPCB’s John Doerr. “With 200,000 new users joining the service every day, and with dynamic growth in emerging markets from India to the Middle East to Africa to Brazil, Truecaller is transforming how we manage our information, and I am thrilled to join the team.”
Today’s Series C funding round follows an $18.8 million dollar investment in the company led by Sequoia Capital in February of this year, bringing the total investment in the company to more than $80 million. To take part in Truecaller’s growing community, you can download the free app on popular platforms including iOS, Android, Windows Phone, BlackBerry and Nokia feature phones.
Truecaller is a Stockholm-based firm with more than 85 million users who utilize the service to search contact numbers, block spam and identify incoming calls to their mobile phones. In today's world of connected devices and social networks, Truecaller delivers an experience that goes beyond the limitations of today's phonebook apps so that people always have access to the right information, people and businesses they need. Over the past year, the company has also forged key partnerships with Twitter, Tata Docomo and many other partners to extend even greater value of the service to its users.
"We started by helping people manage their contact information and block spam calls, but this is just the beginning of what we can do for our users,” said Truecaller co-founder and CEO Alan Mamedi. "We are committed to perfecting the Truecaller experience, and believe that intelligent and predictive services will be the future of the contact management experience.”
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