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True caller to set up Sub-Saharan Africa headquarters in Nairobi

Truecaller has announced plans to set up headquarters in Nairobi,Kenya and has appointed Zakaria Hersi as Director of Partnerships for Africa. In his position, Zakaria will be spearheading Truecaller’s expansion in the region and forging partnerships with various eco-system players.

The Truecaller app allows people to see who is calling and filter out spam calls and SMSes and has more than 50 million users in Africa.

The company also revealed that it has more than 6 million users in Kenya alone, where the user base has grown over 35 percent over the past year. The Truecaller app is identifying more than half a billion calls monthly, blocking and filtering out more than 4.4 million, including 14 million spam SMSes, 50 percent of these SMSes being reported as spam.

“Over the years, Kenya has consistently been a top market for us, with some of our highest usage globally, which is why it made sense for us to set up headquarters in Nairobi. With this positive momentum of growth, we look forward to bringing new, innovative and localized services and offerings, while expanding our presence and engaging more deeply with the tech ecosystem,” said Zakaria Hersi, Director of Partnerships, Africa at Truecaller.



Some of Hersi’s achievements include launching marketplaces around the world where he assisted Swedish Investment firm Kinnevik launch Saltside in Nigeria during his post as Managing Director. Hersi also had two stints working for Swedish based company Besedo, where he helped open offices in Colombia and Mauritius. During his period at Besedo, he worked closely with some of the largest marketplaces (eBay, Match.com & OLX) in Europe and South America, and was responsible for the post-merger integration of the company including French AI Company IoSquare.

Late last year Truecaller launched its Developer Program with Truecaller SDK, its mobile identity product for digital start-ups and app developers, and announced that they will be doubling down on their monetization initiative, and introducing Truecaller Priority program in Sub-Sahara Africa.

Truecaller SDK enables 3rd party app developers, digital businesses and start-ups to verify end users quickly and frictionlessly, by utilizing their Truecaller profile with a one-touch and password free experience. The Truecaller SDK is available on Android, iOS and web platforms and can be used by any app or a website to instantly on-board, autofill user information, or verify the user’s phone number based identity through a users’ consent.

Truecaller Priority is a new service that ensures that users will always know when it’s a relevant and important call made from a company – and not a spam call. This will provide an enhanced delivery experience by giving Truecaller users more context to calls, which allows people to know, for example, when their package has arrived.

In a recent study conducted by Truecaller, South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya and Egypt rank among the top 20 countries in the world being plagued by unwanted spam calls.


--itnewsafrica
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