Truecaller

Phone Number And Not Email Is The Primary Identity

The phone number has undoubtedly become the default mobile identity enabling the daily lifeline for the masses in India and across many emerging markets around the world.

The beauty of this form of identity is that it is agnostic of languages, economic and social pyramids and gender demographics, offline vs. online worlds, feature phone vs. smartphone segments. Hence, it has and will continue to have a mass appeal even as more users expand their horizon from offline only to offline + online world.

Taking India as a case here, the mobile phone subscriber base crested the 1 billion user mark long back, as per data from TRAI. These subscribers are split across mostly feature phones(over 60%) amidst the accelerated transition towards smartphones.