Truecaller partners with Tata Docomo to offer service with no data charges

Swedish caller ID firm Truecaller on Thursday announced a partnership with Tata Docomo, the first with any Indian telecom operator.

Under the partnership, Tata Docomo customers will be able to access the Truecaller service without having to pay mobile Internet charges.

The application accesses the phonebooks of users with their permission to include their contacts in its database.

(Also see: Truecaller app update brings Live Caller ID to iPhone)

Whenever a Truecaller user receives an incoming call, it shows the name of caller on the phone screen even if it is not saved on the mobile phone, by checking it immediately from its database.

"India is important for Truecaller at present. Out of 55 million subscribers, about 30 million are in India. These stats talk about importance of our partnership with Tata Docomo," Truecaller's Vice President for Growth and Partnership, Asia, Kari Krishnamurthy told PTI.

"We only need access to contact lists of users. However, users can also unlist their numbers from our website if they don't want their mobile number to be searched by unknown persons," Krishnamurthy said.

Under the agreement, Tata Docomo customers will also get access to premium features of Truecaller free for 90 days.

These features include advertisement free experience, the ability for users to see who's viewed their profile, and even how many minutes ago someone saw it.

(Also see: Truecaller database allegedly hacked by Syrian Electronic Army)

"Besides this users will get 30 contact requests at the start of every month. With these requests users can contact other Truecaller users by looking for their name in the directory... [i.e] they can search phone numbers by typing a name," Krishnamurthy said.

He said that Truecaller is adding 6 lakh users a week in India and with this partnership Truecaller expects to increase growth rate.