One Thing Today in Tech

Apple reported fiscal third-quarter earnings on Thursday that beat Wall Street expectations for sales and profit, but a slowdown in growth was clear. In India, the company doubled its revenue and said enterprises like Wipro were buying Apple products to attract and retain talent. And Paytm is on track to break even by September 2023, founder and CEO Vijay Shekhar Sharma told shareholders.

Notes:

Apple reported fiscal third-quarter earnings on Thursday that beat Wall Street expectations for sales and profit but a slowdown in growth was clear.

Apple’s revenue rose 2 percent to $83 billion during the quarter, compared with 36 percent for the same period last year and more than 8 percent in the March quarter. CEO Tim Cook said the results were better than expected while CFO Luca Maestri said it was a “challenging operating environment,” in a press release.

“In terms of an outlook in the aggregate, we expect revenue to accelerate in the September quarter despite seeing some pockets of softness,” Cook told CNBC.

Specific to operations in India, Cook said the company saw “a new doubling of revenue,” according to an email from the company, highlighting the comments specific to this market. CFO Maestri added that Apple was making inroads into the enterprise segment in markets including India, and provided the example of IT services company Wipro, which was buying MacBook Air laptops running on Apple’s M1 chips for recruits worldwide.

Meanwhile, Amazon executives told reporters at a conference yesterday that they were not seeing a slowdown. The ecommerce giant beat estimates on revenue for its fiscal second quarter, sending its shares higher by 13 percent, even though earnings missed expectations.

On the impact of inflation, Amazon CFO Brian Olsavsky told reporters, “We have not seen anything yet,” CNBC reports. “We saw demand increase during the quarter, and we had a very strong June,” Olsavsky added, according to CNBC.

One97 Communications, one of India’s biggest payments companies that operates under the ubiquitous brand Paytm, is on track to breakeven by September 2023, founder and CEO Vijay Shekhar Sharma told shareholders in a letter, yesterday, published in the company’s first annual report after it went public last year.

“I believe that over the past year, our team has done a great job in massively improving our revenues and contribution profits,” Sharma said in the letter. This allows for investments in the company’s payments and credit businesses while at the same time reducing its EBITDA losses, he said.

For the fiscal year ended March 2022, One97 reported consolidated revenues of Rs. 5264 crores, an increase of 65 percent over the previous year. EBITDA level losses – excluding employee stock option plan expenses – came down to Rs. 1518 crore, from 1655 crore, according to the annual report.

“We are seeing excellent momentum in our businesses and are on track to achieve operating profitability (EBITDA before ESOP cost) by the quarter ending September 2023,” he said.

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CE Info Systems, better known as MapmyIndia, an advanced digital maps and location tech provider, yesterday announced the wider availability of its Mappls RealView, a made-in-India 360-degree panoramic street view and 3D metaverse maps service. This coincides with Google’s relaunch of Street View in India. Swiggy’s delivery agents are protesting pay-out cuts. And, in more Google news, the search giant will keep the cookies in Chrome, after all. At least until 2024, now.

Notes:

CE Info Systems, better known as MapmyIndia, an advanced digital maps and location tech provider, yesterday announced the wider release of its Mappls RealView, a made-in-India 360-degree panoramic street view and 3D metaverse maps service.

MapmyIndia’s announcement coincides with Google relaunching its Street View feature on Google Maps in India yesterday.

The service is available on the company’s free mapping portal, Mappls.com on the web for mobile and desktop and the Mappls App on Android and iOS, MapmyIndia said in a press release.

“Users can virtually explore India like never before and see and interact with full 360-degree panoramas of streets and roads looking out into various tourist, residential and commercial areas of cities and travel destinations as well as highways,” CEO Rohan Verma said in the release.

Users can also experience immersive 3D maps for pan India and detailed interactive 3D models of iconic tourist, commercial and residential landmarks across India. MapmyIndia has combined detailed house-address level 2D maps with ISRO’s rich catalogue of satellite imagery and Earth observation data, to provide an immersive 3D experience, according to the company.

Swiggy’s delivery agents have been striking in Bengaluru, Mumbai and Delhi after the food delivery service provider cut their pay-outs, Economic Times reports. India’s food and groceries delivery businesses, including listed company Zomato, are operating at a loss, burning through venture capital funds.

Google, yesterday, said it will now hold off until 2024, in the latest update on its plans to replace third-party cookies for advertising, CNBC reports.

“The most consistent feedback we’ve received is the need for more time to evaluate and test the new Privacy Sandbox technologies before deprecating third-party cookies in Chrome,” Anthony Chavez, Google’s VP of privacy sandbox, wrote in a blog post. “As developers adopt these APIs, we now intend to begin phasing out third-party cookies in Chrome in the second half of 2024.”

Cookies are small pieces of code in websites, tracking people’s visits and clicks, and helping advertisers push targeted ads. Google had said last year it would end support for cookies in its Chrome browser by early 2022 once it figured out how to address the needs of users, publishers and advertisers and come up with tools to ease workarounds, according to CNBC.

Now Google won’t make the change for another two years.

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The auction for the 5G spectrum got underway yesterday in India and the government received bids worth $18 billion on the first day from conglomerates including the Reliance Group and Adani Group, TechCrunch reports. PhonePe, one of the largest fintech businesses in India, is seeking a massive valuation ahead of its separation from parent Flipkart, ET reports. And Google’s parent Alphabet missed earnings estimates yesterday and warned of uncertainty ahead.

Notes:

The auction for the 5G spectrum got underway yesterday in India and the government received bids worth $18 billion on the first day from conglomerates including the Reliance Group and Adani Group, TechCrunch reports.

Telecom Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw told reporters on Tuesday evening that bids went “far beyond our expectations” and “it looks like [the bidding level] will be at the same level” on Wednesday, according to TechCrunch.

The high-speed networks are set to begin rolling out in September and “by the end of the year, residents of several Indian cities will be able to experience 5G,” the minister added.

PhonePe is seeking a valuation of more than $12 billion in new funding talks, Economic Times reports. That compares with its private valuation of $5.5 billion in 2020, when Walmart invested $700 million in the fintech company, according to ET.

The talks are at an early stage, while PhonePe moves forward with its ongoing separation from parent Flipkart that will allow it to eventually list on the Indian stock exchanges, according to ET.

PhonePe, founded by former Flipkart executives Sameer Nigam and Rahul Chari in 2015, was acquired by Flipkart the following year, which in turn was bought by the US retail giant Walmart. PhonePe is in the process of dissolving its Singapore holding company and moving to India, according to ET.

Google’s parent Alphabet, yesterday, reported weaker-than-expected earnings and revenue for the second quarter, CNBC reports.

Revenue growth slowed to 13 percent in the three months that ended June 30, from 62 percent a year earlier when the company was benefiting from the post-pandemic reopening and consumer spending was on the rise, according to CNBC.

Currency fluctuations from a strengthening dollar knocked 3.7 percentage points off revenue growth, CFO Ruth Porat told CNBC. Porat said the strength of the dollar will hit next quarter’s results even harder.

The CFO also characterized the current outlook as one of “uncertainty in the global economic environment.”

Advertising revenue increased 12 percent to $56.3 billion, as marketers cut spending. The most notable slowdown was in the YouTube division, where sales rose 5 percent compared with 84 percent in the same period a year ago, CNBC notes.

CEO Sundar Pichai said in a press release that growth was driven by search and Google Cloud. The enterprise cloud business, while still loss-making, rose 35.6 percent in the June quarter to become a $25 billion business on an annual basis.

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Zomato’s shares fell as much as 14 percent yesterday, after a post-IPO lock-in period ended for the loss-making food delivery service and tech platform company. Walmart issued an earnings warning, lowering its projections for the current quarter and the full year, signalling the deepening slowdown. Atlassian names Rajeev Rajan CTO. And the Kardashians don’t like where Instagram is headed.

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Zomato’s shares fell as much as 14 percent yesterday, after a post-IPO lock-in period ended for the loss-making food delivery service and tech platform company, Times of India reports. The stock ended the day 11 percent lower.

Zomato was listed on the stock exchanges in Mumbai with much fanfare a year ago, more than doubling from its listing price of Rs. 76 and then quickly plummeting to the 50s before the lock-in period ended yesterday.

Analysts told Times of India that the company has no clear path to profitability over the next few years and that recent bets on quick delivery are unlikely to pan out. Such ventures haven’t done well in other markets and make Zomato’s outlook “more speculative,” Richa Agarwal, senior research analyst at Equitymaster told Times of India.

Walmart, yesterday, issued an earnings warning, lowering its quarterly and full-year profit guidance, blaming inflation, and signalling a deepening slowdown. The announcement sent shares of Amazon down 4 percent as well, CNBC reports.

“The increasing levels of food and fuel inflation are affecting how customers spend, and while we’ve made good progress clearing hard-line categories, apparel in Walmart US is requiring more markdown dollars,” CEO Doug McMillon said in a news release.

Walmart now expects adjusted earnings per share for the second quarter and full year to be lower by 8-9 percent and 11-13 percent, respectively. Previously, it had forecast them to be flat to up slightly for the second quarter and to drop by 1 percent for the full year, according to CNBC.

Atlassian, a provider of team collaboration and productivity software, has appointed Rajeev Rajan as its new chief technology officer, the Nasdaq-listed Australian company said in a press release yesterday.

Rajeev, who’s previously worked at Meta and Microsoft, will lead all the engineering, IT and security teams at Atlassian worldwide.

In 2018, when Kylie Jenner criticised the redesign of Snapchat, its parent company Snap’s shares fell 7 percent. Now Jenner and her sister Kim Kardashian, influential social media celebrities, have taken issue with the direction Instagram is headed. Yesterday, they urged Instagram to stop mimicking rival TikTok, CNBC reports.

To their hundreds of millions of Instagram followers, Jenner and Kardashian posted a message that read, “Make Instagram Instagram Again.”

Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, has been pushing into short videos, a market that TikTok dominates in mobile. Meta shares, however, held their price, according to CNBC.

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Infosys reported its highest fiscal first-quarter revenue growth in more than 10 years, and its lowest Q1 operating margins of this century, so far, as the company joins rivals in prioritising growth amid another global economic slowdown. Revenue for the three months ended June 30 was $4.44 billion, a 21.4 percent increase over the year-earlier period, the highest since Q1 of FY12. Operating margins came in at 20 percent.

Notes:

Infosys reported its highest fiscal first-quarter revenue growth in more than 10 years, and its lowest Q1 operating margins of this century, so far, as the company joins rivals in prioritising growth amid another global economic slowdown.

Shares were down about 0.9 percent on the stock exchanges in Mumbai, at 10:10 a.m. local time. Revenue for the three months ended June 30 was $4.44 billion, a 21.4 percent increase over the year-earlier period, Bengaluru-based Infosys, India’s second-biggest IT services company, said in a press release. That is the highest first-quarter increase since Q1 of FY12.

The company’s Q1 performance was “strong overall,” CEO and MD Salil Parekh, who recently saw his tenure extended by another five years, said in the press release. “We continue to gain market share and see a significant pipeline driven by our Cobalt cloud capabilities and differentiated digital value proposition,” he added.

Cobalt refers to Infosys’s suite of cloud technologies and services. The company now attributes 61 percent of its revenues to digital-tech-based services, which grew 37.5 percent during Q1.

India’s biggest IT companies, which are now among the world’s biggest software services providers as well, are strategically giving up some profit margins to ensure that they win large contracts and market share, senior industry analysts say.

“Right now it’s a smart strategy to grow revenues to take market share and accept lower margins, for now,” Ray Wang, founder and principal analyst at Constellation Research told Forbes India in an email. “There is a labour market shortage and if you have the contracts, you have the work guaranteed to bring on new staff and train them so you can achieve a lower cost for delivery in the longer run,” Wang explains.

Infosys’s fiscal Q1 operating margin came in at 20 percent, as the company continues to grapple with high staff churn, while CEO Salil Parekh said it has begun to moderate over the last two quarters. The June quarter operating margin is the lowest Q1 figure up to at least FY 2000 for which data is immediately available in the investors' section of the company’s website.

Revenue growth, on a year-on-year basis, was in double digits across all business segments in constant currency terms, Infosys said in its press release. Net hiring was at 21,171 recruits for Q1. Infosys also increase its full-year revenue outlook to the range of 14-16 percent versus the previous 13-15 percent estimate from April.

The company has retained its margin projection of 21-23 percent, and CFO Nilanjan Roy expects to hit the lower end of the range.

Infosys press release

https://www.infosys.com/investors/reports-filings/quarterly-results/2022-2023/q1/documents/ifrs-usd-press-release.pdf

Wipro says its order pipeline is at an “all-time high” and expects to grow as much as 5 percent sequentially in the current quarter. Mojang Studios, the makers of the hugely popular online game and platform Minecraft, has banned any NFT implementation within the game, they said in a scathing post yesterday, criticising the culture of exclusion that NFTs promote. OnePlus fans in New York can buy tickets to attend an in-person launch of the OnePlus 10T 5G phone and get earbuds as goodies. Others can watch the live stream on August 3.

Notes:

Wipro expects to grow as much as 5 percent sequentially in the current quarter, the Bengaluru IT services company, India’s fourth biggest, said yesterday after markets. For its fiscal first quarter that ended June 30, Wipro’s revenues were $2.7 billion, a 2.1 percent increase from the previous quarter and 17.2 percent from the year-ago period, in constant currency, according to a press release.

The company expects revenue from its IT Services business – which contributes most of its revenues and profits – to be in the range of $2,817 million to $2,872 million. This translates to a sequential growth of 3 percent to 5 percent.

“Our order bookings grew 32 percent YoY in total contract value terms, powered by large transformational deals, and our pipeline today is at an all-time high,” Wipro’s Paris-based CEO Thierry Delaporte, said in the press release.

Mojang Studios, the makers of the hugely popular online game and platform Minecraft, has banned any NFT implementation within the game, they said in a scathing post, yesterday, criticising the culture of exclusion that NFTs promote.

“To ensure that Minecraft players have a safe and inclusive experience, blockchain technologies are not permitted to be integrated inside our client and server applications, nor may Minecraft in-game content such as worlds, skins, persona items, or other mods, be utilized by blockchain technology to create a scarce digital asset,” they said in the post.

"The speculative pricing and investment mentality around NFTs takes the focus away from playing the game and encourages profiteering, which we think is inconsistent with the long-term joy and success of our players."

OnePlus will launch its next hi-end phone, the OnePlus 10T at a physical event in the US on August 3, co-founder and CEO Pete Lau posted on the company’s community site. The phone is being promoted with the tagline ‘evolve beyond speed’ to highlight the idea that it will offer various smart features, taking advantage of the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8+ chip the phone runs on.

The OnePlus 10T will launch at Gotham Hall in New York City, according to Lau’s post. “The return to an offline event also means the return of our launch event goodies. Those who purchase a ticket will get top-tier merchandise, topped with the critically acclaimed OnePlus Nord Buds,” he added.

Alongside the phone, OnePlus will also unveil the latest version of its Android-based software, OxygenOS 13. The software OxygenOS 13 will bring improvements to gaming, connectivity, and customisation, according to GSMArena. It will launch first on the OnePlus 10 Pro, and later in the year on the OnePlus 10T.

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Ather Energy, an electric scooter maker in Bengaluru, has released the next iteration of its popular 450X high-performance scooter. The Ather 450X-Gen3 has a bigger battery and more RAM. It will set you back by about Rs. 1,50,000. Shiprocket is expanding via Rs 200 crore stock-and-cash acquisition. And IIT Kanpur engineers have innovated a memory-muscle-based actuator that could improve India’s space robotics efforts.

Notes:

Ather Energy, an electric scooter maker in Bengaluru, has released the next iteration of its popular 450X high-performance scooter. The new scooter, called Ather 450X Generation 3, is equipped with a bigger, more powerful 3.7 kWh battery that is 25 percent larger than the previous generation, the company said in a press release.

The larger battery gives an ARAI-certified range of 146km and 105km based on Ather’s TrueRange measurements. The scooter also has an upgraded dashboard, and more memory, at 2GB RAM, for applications to run.

Showroom prices vary based on the city, from Rs. 1,37,612 in Ahmedabad to Rs. 1,57,402 in Hyderabad. The scooter is priced at Rs 1,55,657 in Bengaluru. The 450X-Gen3 is now in showrooms.

Engineers at the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, have developed what they call a ‘bio-inspired artificial muscle’ for next-generation space robots and medical prostheses.

Encouraged by the industry demand and growth in the field of miniature, lightweight, non-magnetic gear-free actuators, shape memory alloy-based actuators have emerged with an excellent power-to-weight ratio as a suitable alternative to conventional actuators, the innovators, at the Smart Materials, Structures and Systems Lab, said in a press release.

However, existing SMA actuators have limited scope in terms of higher force or torque output due to the relatively simple architecture of the actuation mechanism. To address this limitation, the engineers found a way to increase muscle force output per unit weight by about 70 percent.

This will result in the creation of a new class of space robots which will help India’s space technology efforts, they say. The team is led by Professor Bishakh Bhattacharya at the institute’s department of mechanical engineering and includes Kanhaiya Lal Chaurasiya, senior project engineer, A Sri Harsha, and Yashaswi Sinha, project engineers.

Their effort was backed by Portescap CSR funding, according to the press release.

Shiprocket, which provides an online platform for SMEs and direct-to-consumer retailers to tap ecommerce channels, is acquiring Arvind Internet, better known for its brand Omuni, a similar business.

The Rs. 200 crore transaction will be a combination of stock and cash.

PharmEasy, an online pharmacy and medical services provider, is in talks to raise $200 million, but at a valuation that could be as much as 25 percent lower than last year's $5.1 billion, Reuters reports, citing two people with direct knowledge of the talks.

The company, which offers online medicine deliveries and diagnostic test services, is in talks for raising money at a 15 percent lower valuation but has told its bankers to consider even a 25 percent reduction, if needed, to close the deal, according to Reuters.

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Pratt & Whitney, an aerospace company that is part of the multinational defence conglomerate Raytheon Technologies, announced the establishment of a state-of-the-art India Engineering Center (IEC) in Bengaluru, which is planned to open in January 2023. Bharti Airtel tested a private 5G network at German automotive company Bosch’s centre in Bengaluru. And the RBI wants cryptos banned, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman reiterated in parliament yesterday.

Notes:

Reserve Bank of India, the country’s central bank, is of the view that cryptocurrencies should be banned, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman told parliament yesterday in a statement, in reply to a question on virtual currencies.

Given the concerns expressed by RBI on the destabilising effect of cryptocurrencies on the monetary and fiscal stability of a country, RBI has recommended framing legislation on this sector. The central bank is of the view that cryptocurrencies should be prohibited, the minister said.

Cryptos are, by definition, borderless and require international collaboration to prevent regulatory arbitrage. Therefore, any legislation for regulation or banning can be effective only after significant international collaboration on evaluation of the risks and benefits and evolution of common taxonomy and standards, Sitharaman added.

Tata Consultancy Services is in the process of establishing eight large new offices – including some in non-metro cities -- each having the capacity to house more than 10,000 employees, Economic Times reports, citing CFO Samir Seksaria.

As part of the strategy, these new offices will be designed to facilitate easy collaboration, Seksaria told ET.

Pratt & Whitney, an aerospace company that is part of the multinational defence conglomerate Raytheon Technologies, yesterday, announced the establishment of a state-of-the-art India Engineering Center (IEC) in Bengaluru, which is planned to open in January 2023.

Pratt & Whitney’s aircraft engines are widely used in civilian and military aircraft. The company’s new India centre will focus on providing contract engineering services and is expected to employ 500 engineers and professionals when fully staffed, according to a press release.

The centre is “a first-of-its-kind investment for our company in India,” Geoff Hunt, senior VP of engineering, said in the press release.

America’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is opening one more special investigation into a Tesla vehicle crash, according to documents viewed by TechCrunch. This time it involves the crash of a 2021 Tesla Model Y that killed a motorcyclist in California earlier this month, TechCrunch reports.

Bharti Airtel, last week, announced the successful trial of India’s first 5G Private Network at Bosch Automotive Electronics India’s facility in Bengaluru. Airtel’s on-premises 5G Captive Private Network was built over the trial 5G spectrum allocated by India’s Department of Telecom, the wireless services provider said in a press release.

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India is working on a ‘Right to Repair’ framework aimed at serving the dual purpose of making it hassle-free for consumers to get their products repaired at a reasonable cost, and boosting the country’s circular economy, the central government said in a statement last week. IAMAI, one of the country’s biggest tech lobbies, is walking away from crypto. And Microsoft has emerged as Netflix’s exclusive partner to build its ad-supported service.

Notes:

India is working on a ‘Right to Repair’ framework aimed at making it hassle-free for consumers to get their products repaired at a reasonable cost, and boosting the country’s circular economy, the central government’s Department of Consumer Affairs said in a statement last week.

The aim of developing a framework on right to repair in India is to empower consumers and product buyers in the local market because manufacturers are promoting a culture of planned obsolescence, the department said. The framework will harmonize trade between the original equipment manufacturers and the third-party buyers and sellers, emphasize developing sustainable consumption of products and reduction of e-waste, the department said in the statement.

A committee that has been set up to put together the framework, has identified sectors including farming equipment, mobile phones and tablets, consumer durables and automobiles and automobile equipment.

Last month, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched the Lifestyle for Environment movement, which includes encouraging the reuse and recycling of various consumer products.

Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI), an influential tech lobby backed by some of the biggest telecom and internet companies operating in the country, has decided to end its championing of the crypto industry.

The association said in a statement last week that it is dissolving the Blockchain and Crypto Assets Council (BACC), which it created four years ago. The decision was taken because a resolution of the regulatory environment for the crypto industry is still very uncertain in India, the association said in its statement.

Instead, IAMAI would like to utilise its resources for other emerging digital sectors, which make a more immediate and direct contribution to digital India, notably, deepening financial inclusion and promoting the Central Bank-issued Digital Currency, it said in the statement.

Microsoft has won the competition to become Netflix’s exclusive partner to build an ad-based service, beating out potential rivals such as Google and Comcast, Wall Street Journal reported on Friday.

Netflix plans to launch an ad-supported service in at least 10 markets by the end of the year, including Canada and the UK, the Journal reports, citing people familiar with the plans. In an internal memo announcing the Microsoft partnership, Netflix senior leaders said they chose Microsoft because of its approach to data privacy, the technology platform it offered and its sales team, one of the people told the Journal.

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Infosys announced a definitive agreement to acquire BASE life science, a technology and consulting firm in the life sciences industry, in Europe, adding 200 multidisciplinary consultants. Agnikul Cosmos opened its first rocket factory in Chennai with the capacity to make two fully 3D-printed engines every week. And Truecaller gets into the audio social app space with Open Doors – think latest Clubhouse rival.

Notes:

Infosys, yesterday, said it is acquiring BASE life science, a technology and consulting firm in Europe. Bengaluru’s Infosys, India’s second-biggest IT services company, didn’t provide any details about the terms of the deal.

Headquartered in Denmark, BASE has about 200 multidisciplinary industry experts spread over Denmark, Switzerland, the UK, Germany, France, Italy, and a nearshore technology hub in Spain. Together with Infosys, BASE will further expand its portfolio of expertise into Consumer Health, Animal Health, MedTech and Genomics segments.

Agnikul Cosmos, an Indian space startup, yesterday announced the opening of its first rocket factory to make 3D printed rocket engines. The factory can turn out two rocket engines a week, Agnikul said in a press release.

Chennai-based Agnikul was started in 2017 by entrepreneurs Srinath Ravichandran and Moin SPM and Satya Chakravarty, a professor at the Indian Institute of Technology Madras, where Agnikul was incubated, to make space rockets that can put satellites into low earth orbits.

Their first product, Agnibaan, is a customisable, 2-stage launch vehicle, capable of taking up to 100kg payload to orbits around 700km above the planet’s surface. The rocket will likely see its first space launch later this year or early next year.

The rocket engine is called Agnilet and is the world's first single-piece 3D printed engine fully designed and manufactured in India. It was successfully test-fired in early 2021.

Ola Electric, the electric vehicles business of ride-hailing service provider Ola, has invested $100 million in research and development, to make its own lithium-ion battery cells, Economic Times reports, citing reports from brokerages ICICI Securities and Edelweiss.

Ola Electric has put together a team of more than 200 people for this effort, according to ET. EV battery cells are currently fully imported in India, with no local capacity.

Ola Electric aims to develop its in-house capability by 2026, according to ET.

True Software Scandinavia, the maker of Truecaller, yesterday launched Open Doors, an audio-based social app similar to Clubhouse – where people can start conversations that others can join, from anywhere in the world, as long as you have an internet connection.

If you are already a Truecaller user, you can sign in with just one tap. If not, your phone number will be verified using a missed call or OTP. The app needs contacts and phone permissions, but participants in a conversation can’t see each other's phone numbers, the company said in a press release.

At launch, the app interface will be available in English, Hindi, Spanish, Latin and French, with more languages to be added later on user demand.

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