Truecaller has challenged India’s telecom regulator over caller ID rules, arguing that the anti-spam framework of the country is making it hard to protect users from unwanted and fraudulent calls in its largest market.
The dispute began after Truecaller CEO, Rishit Jhunjhunwala, criticised the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) on X, accusing the regulator of preventing the app from displaying community-reported spam labels for calls originating from the dedicated 1400 and 1600 number series of the country.
According to Jhunjhunwala, the restriction has allowed abuse of the designated numbers while reducing consumer confidence in legitimate business calls.
The controversy stems from regulations introduced by TRAI in 2024, which assigned the 1400 number series to telemarketing calls and the 1600 series to service and transactional communications. The regulator said the move was intended to help consumers distinguish genuine business calls from spam and scam communications.
However, Truecaller argues that the policy has produced unintended consequences. Jhunjhunwala said users have increasingly ignored calls from the designated number series, with 81% of calls from the 1400 series and 79% from the 1600 series going unanswered over the past eight months.
He also revealed that users manually blocked about 74 million calls from the two number ranges during the same period, while daily blocking of 1600-series numbers has more than tripled since October 2025.
Truecaller later introduced a “Frequently Blocked” badge to notify users when a number has been blocked by a large number of people, because the company is unable to label the numbers as spam under the current rules.
The public disagreement follows a report by The Economic Times that TRAI is seeking additional powers under India’s Information Technology Act to take action against caller identification applications, including Truecaller, Hiya and Whoscall, for labelling numbers within the designated series as spam.
Jhunjhunwala said Truecaller plans to submit its data to the Indian IT ministry during the regulatory process, insisting that any decision affecting caller ID platforms should be based on evidence.
