Caller ID platform Truecaller recently launched a new feature that allows a person to become an admin of a family group, receive alerts about scam calls received by other members, and even end a call on their behalf if they suspect a family member may be being scammed.
The company, which has more than 450 million users, first launched the feature in December in a handful of countries including Sweden, Chile, Malaysia and Kenya. Truecaller said that after seeing promising results, it decided to roll it out globally, including India, the company’s biggest market. The feature is free and users can create groups even if they are not on a paid Truecaller plan.
With this feature, the member of a group of tech-savvy friends or family can become the administrator of a group of up to five members. Once the other members join the group, the admin can receive alerts about possible fraudulent calls received by those members. If the administrator believes that the call could harm the member, they can also end the call remotely. While the admin can receive scam call alerts when a member is using iOS or Android, they can only end calls for Android members.
On Android, members can also grant admin permission to detect real-time activity such as walking or driving, battery level, and phone sound settings (to check if the phone is on silent). Truecaller said this is useful for administrators to keep track of elderly members and only call them when they are not walking or driving.
Admin can also block certain numbers and international dialing codes and share a block list with team members.
Truecaller noted that the admin cannot see the non-spam call history or SMS history of the group members.
“I think, unfortunately, all of us know someone or the other in our families or friends who have been affected by fraud,” Kunal Dua, Chief Product Officer, Truecaller, told TechCrunch after a call. “In that sense, it’s a fundamental shift for Truecaller in terms of what we focus on as a problem,” he added.
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Last year, Truecaller introduced a voicemail feature for Indian users which features an AI assistant that listens to calls when a user is unavailable and provides a summary of the transcript. The company is exploring a similar AI approach to family protection to potentially alert an administrator about the type of scam call a team member is receiving.
The company is also exploring using artificial intelligence to screen calls and automatically disconnect them when certain words associated with scams are detected, such as “digital capture” – a tactic in which criminals impersonate the police to extract information or money from the recipients of the calls.
In India, scam calls have increased over time and caused financial losses across the country. Truecaller said it detected more than 7.7 billion scam calls last year. Indian authorities started multiple initiativesincluding a controversial policy it’s called SIM lock which could prevent apps like WhatsApp and Telegram from working.
Truecaller faces headwinds. Its stock has fallen more than 80% in the past 12 months. During its Q4 2025 report, the company said EBDITA – a measure of operating profitability – fell 49% year over year, with ad revenue down 31%. The company also faces challenges from India Display caller name system (CNAP), which displays the caller’s name as registered with their mobile operator. Truecaller has argued that simply displaying a caller’s name will not reduce spam calls, arguing that its platform goes further by offering community-based reporting.
“In India, there has been a lot of talk about the upcoming launch of CNAP,” Truecaller CEO Rishit Jhunjhunwala said during the Q4 2025 earnings call. “CNAP has been partially launched and so far, the impact on our user growth is limited. As we’ve said before, we expect CNAP may have some impact on user growth, but that remains to be seen as CNAP reaches full readiness.”
Jhunjhunwala continued, “Our focus continues to be on providing a superior product and, as you know, the consumer can choose to have CNAP and Truecaller alongside, where we provide much more information and much more context and various other solutions, for the consumer.”
