Truecaller CEO Rishit Jhunjhunwala has publicly criticised the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India after the regulator sought powers to stop caller identification apps from showing any information on calls from the 140 and 1600 number series. Jhunjhunwala shared his reaction on X, laying out how the directive has affected users since it was first enforced in late 2025.
How did the directive backfire?
Jhunjhunwala explained that in late 2025, TRAI had directed businesses to route calls through the 140 series for telemarketing and the 1600 series for banking, financial services and insurance related service and transaction calls. The intention was to help consumers identify legitimate business communication. However, TRAI also mandated that Truecaller not show any community reported spam information for these two series, meaning the app could never flag 140 or 1600 numbers as spam regardless of how many users reported them.
Jhunjhunwala said this restriction did not sit well with the company. He wrote that Truecaller has helped hundreds of millions of Indians every single day for 17 years and questioned why the regulator would want to censor or suppress trusted information from people. He said Truecaller had flagged this concern to TRAI in advance, adding, "we knew exactly what would happen next."
Spam calls surged, says Truecaller
According to Jhunjhunwala, the volume of spam calls made through the 140 and 1600 series skyrocketed after the directive took effect. He said over 51 million calls from both series now go unanswered every single day, and that there has been a massive increase in spam and scam calls reported by the Truecaller community, even though the app is not allowed to display this information. "This happened in front of our eyes and we are mandated not to tell our users that those calls are spam," he said.
He added that users have also lost trust in the number series altogether. Over the past eight months, Truecaller users have ignored 81 percent of all 140 series calls and 79 percent of all 1600 series calls. Jhunjhunwala noted that some of these calls are legitimate and would ordinarily have carried Truecaller's verified badge, but consumers stopped answering them regardless. "It's a lose-lose situation for everyone," he said.
On the 1600 series specifically, Jhunjhunwala said daily blocking actions have tripled, rising 208 percent since October 2025. He said a total of 7.4 crore, or 74 million, manual blocking actions have been taken against the series in the past eight months. He added that Truecaller users currently block 4 lakh, or 400,000, calls from the 140 series and 1.25 lakh, or 125,000, calls from the 1600 series every single day.
Truecaller's workaround
Jhunjhunwala said the company eventually decided to act and built the "Frequently Blocked" badge. He explained that if a 1600 series number has been blocked by many people, Truecaller now surfaces this information to users, though it stops short of marking the number as spam.
Reaction to TRAI's latest request
Jhunjhunwala said Truecaller learned that TRAI is now asking the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology for authority to stop caller identification apps from showing any information at all on 140 and 1600 numbers. He called the move senseless. "We are the good actors who are helping hundreds of millions of Indians every day, including the vulnerable elderly, to have a trusted communication experience. Instead, they want to enable bad actors and give them an open playground to spam and scam us by censoring community information. We find this unacceptable. Penalize the bad actors, not the ones like Truecaller that make a significant positive impact," he wrote.
Jhunjhunwala said Truecaller trusts the regulatory process and will share all relevant data with the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, as it has previously done with TRAI, to support a data driven decision going forward. He closed by saying, "Nothing will deter us from helping you avoid spam and scam calls."
