Regulatory efforts to curb spam calls in India has given rise to a dispute between Truecaller and the country’s telecom watchdog over the role of third-party caller ID apps in warning consumers about pesky communication from marketers.
The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has sought to prohibit Truecaller from displaying spam warnings for phone numbers in the 140 and 1600 series as telemarketers and banks are reportedly permitted to call users from the designated series without facing anti-spam action.
Truecaller on Wednesday, July 8, publicly criticised TRAI after Economic Times reported that the regulator was seeking powers from the IT Ministry to take action against the app, and others like Hiya and Whoscall, for labelling calls from the designated 140 and 1600 series of phone numbers as spam.
Truecaller CEO Rishit Jhunjhunwala said that it made “absolutely no sense”. “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. Penalise the bad actors, not the ones like Truecaller that make a significant positive impact,” Jhunjhunwala wrote in a post on X.
Wondering why spam calls have increased SIGNIFICANTLY in India recently? Well, it’s actually going to get worse, here’s why:
In late 2025, TRAI enforced businesses to call consumers using 140 (for telemarketing calls) and 1600 (for BFSI companies to make service/transaction… pic.twitter.com/Gy5ykiBxrL
— Rishit Jhunjhunwala (@rishj) July 8, 2026
The clash comes as Truecaller pushes into new products and services beyond its core caller ID business, which is facing growing competition and regulatory scrutiny. India is Truecaller’s largest market with more than 350 million of its 500 million monthly active users based in the country, according to the Stockholm-headquartered company.
Since a majority of Indian users do not pay for the app and its features, the company’s revenue is largely attributable to in-app advertisements and partnerships with firms like Swiggy and Uber. Indian users of Truecaller reported 41.68 billion spam calls in 2025. It is the fifth-worst affected country for spam calls and messages, as per the company.
What do TRAI’s anti-spam rules say?
The current standoff between TRAI and Truecaller stems from an anti-spam framework introduced by the regulator in 2024.
TRAI’s rationale in setting up the framework was that callers tended to miss genuine calls because of their reluctance to pick up calls from unknown numbers. This framework demarcated separate numbering series for service and marketing calls made by businesses with valid consent from users. While businesses could use the 140 number series for telemarketing calls, the 1600 number series could be used for service and transaction-related calls.
The next major step came in February last year, when TRAI amended the Telecom Commercial Communications Customer Preference Regulations (TCCCPR), 2018, to further restrict businesses from using normal 10-digit numbers for telemarketing by mandating the migration to the dedicated numbering series, saying the move would help consumers identify legitimate business communications and curb spam and scam calls.
Earlier this year, TRAI proposed a third amendment to the TCCCPR to ban call management apps like Truecaller from blocking, filtering, tagging, restricting, or facilitating blanket spam-tagging calls from designated commercial number series.
If the apps do not comply with the draft requirement, they would risk losing safe harbour under Section 79 of the Information Technology (IT) Act, 2000, the legal protection that shields online platforms from liability for third-party content.
In its submission to the draft third TCCCPR amendment, the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI), which counts Truecaller as a member, said that the proposed provisions to strip non-compliant intermediaries of safe harbour protections “constitute gross jurisdictional overreach.”
Why is Truecaller opposed to TRAI’s whitelisting rules?
Following a directive issued by TRAI last year, Truecaller has been displaying green badges for calls made from the 140 (promotional) and 1600 (transactional) series.
By dedicating the 140 and 1600 series for commercial calls, TRAI has sought to provide a legitimate channel in the hopes that it would dissuade banks and telemarketers from using unregistered numbers to contact consumers. For consumers, they would easily know that the calls are from banks and telemarketers.
Truecaller does not appear to object to the entire framework. Its main concern seems to be with TRAI’s proposal to prevent caller ID apps from displaying spam warnings for any numbers in the 140 and 1600 series, regardless of user reports or blocking patterns. This restriction has led to abuse of those numbers and eroded trust in legitimate business calls, according to the company.
The platform, which relies on community-reported spam information to display warnings, said that it saw over one lakh blocking actions on 140 and 1600 numbers each day with a total of five crore blocking actions against these numbers. Daily blocking actions against 1600-series numbers have more than tripled since October 2025, Jhunjhunwala said.
In response, Truecaller began adding a ‘Frequently Blocked’ badge alongside the green badges since it was not allowed to mark the calls directly as spam (red badge).
“Some of these calls are of course legit, which Truecaller would have displayed with its verified badge and consumers would have answered these calls. Instead, consumers and legit businesses both lost out. It’s a lose-lose situation for everyone,” Jhunjhunwala said.
The Truecaller chief has further said that the company would share its data with the IT Ministry as part of the regulatory process. He also argued that any regulation for caller ID apps should be evidence-based.
