caller id app truecaller is raising $100m at a $1b valuation

communications apps that strike a chord with users across different markets are hotproperty these days, and it looks like another one of them may soonenter the so-called unicorn club. techcrunch has learned that truecallera caller idapp that now has 150 million users is looking to raisearound $100 million at a $1 billion valuation.we’re hearing that truecaller has hired morgan stanley to lead the process, and there are term sheets out. theround islikely to haveprevious andnew investors.
to date, true software, maker of truecaller, has raised around $80 million.previous investors includeatomico,kleiner perkins caufield & byers,sequoia capital,access partnersandopen ocean.the plan will beto use the fundsto growthe product. truecaller, founded in sweden, has seen a lot of traction in markets like india, its biggest market at 80 million users. now it wants to expand elsewhere, like the u.s., and will be building out the company’soffice in the bay area.the company is projected to hit 300 million users this year.truecaller works by aggregating directory services via deals with white pages companies, and platformslike yelp to bring in businesses. it complements thiswith crowdsourced information from the app’s users. that includes accessing your own address book, although you can opt out. individual users can also opt out from being listed.it then uses big data analytics and machine learningtooffer additional services beyond caller id such as predictingwho you might want to call next based on where you are and what time of day it is, or what the top-reported spam number is in your area at the moment.other features include spam blocking, directory servicesand “smart” smsservices.the company makes revenues through in-app purchases for premium features, as well as advertising within the app. the company’s country manager for india has also reportedlysaidthat truecallermay launch a paid version by the end of this year.
truecaller has been around since 2009, but thegrowing use of mobile phones across all markets has opened up new opportunities for the company. that has not only meantraising more money to take advantage of the bigger trend, butalso spending more. accounts filed in swedenfor 2014 show that truecallerposted net sales of sek6.7 million ($780,000) with a net loss of sek84.646 million ($9.8 million), up nearly 400% on the year before.what’s also interesting about this raise iswhat we’ve heard about some of the potential new investors. a source close to the company tells us that twitter and google are among the companies that have looked at investing. twitter would involeboth investment and partnership, from what we understand.that would not be out of the blue. twitter has already been working withtruecaller since 2013. and twitterhas been quietly building uptwitter venturesas a way to invest in companies it works with. (that actually brings up a third connection between twitter and truecaller: cyanogen, one of twitter venture’s investments, has a deal with truecaller to bake caller id into its handsets.)
twitter’s deal with truecaller lets usersfind people on twitter via their phone numbers, and subsequently follow and tweet to them via the truecaller app. this helps twitter drive moreusage of its service, both from twitter users and newbies. growthisa priority for the company: in its quarterly results yesterday, twitteraddedonly 2 million monthly active users.truecaller’s earlieriterationfocused on providing a mobile phone directory and caller id service to users. that has been a compelling enough concept to havespawnedrivalservices from the likes of facebook and google itselfon android. at the same time, truecaller has been growing its scope,expandingfeatures and functionality and developing a suite of related apps.these include the sms app “truemessenger” (currently only live in india) and an android dialer calledtruedialer.as we have notedbefore,truecallerhas somethings in common with another fast-growing communications app, whatsapp. like the facebook-owned messaging app, truecaller is a mobile-focused service witha lot ofgrowth outside of the u.s., particularlyin some key emerging markets. and also like whatsapp, trucaller’s service provides a way to crossthe mobile silos that have grown up around platforms, carriers and apps.the apps havebeen a hitin countries that have a high number of mobile usersstill using phones largely for calls or apps that use phone numbers to connect people, like whatsapp but little in the way of directory services to help users find each other.spokespeople for truecaller and google ventures declined to comment for this story, and twitter did not return a request for comment.