Sweden-based startup Truecaller made its name as a nifty mobile app that helps people filter out unwanted phone calls and messaging, but now it is making a move to become a platform.

At a press event in India, Truecaller’s largest market based on its 150 million users, the company announced a series of partnerships, including a tie-in with Google which will see the U.S. firm’s Duo newly launched video calling feature integrated into the Truecaller app.

The Truecaller app, which is dedicated to battling annoying calls, is about to become much more than that. In addition to the Duo tie-in, Truecaller is boosting the app by integrating Truemessenger, its two-year-old service for making messaging smarter and managing spam.

Now, in India, Truecaller for Android will go from being a dialing app alternative to a service that can handle calls and also manage SMS and make video calls.

“Video calling should work for everybody, regardless of what platform they are on,” explained Google Duo head Amit Fulay, in a statement. “Our aim is to make video calling simple, fast, and available to everyone. With this Truecaller integration, we’re able to bring a better video calling experience to millions of new users.”
VentureBeat has reached out to both Truecaller and Google for more information on this so-called “strategic agreement,” and whether we can expect Duo to be integrated into any other third-party services in the future. We will update here if or when we hear back.
If nothing else, the Truecaller tie-up gives some insight into the kinds of things Google is thinking about to bring its communication smarts to millions more users. Facebook has all but won the mobile messaging battle, with Facebook, Messenger, and WhatsApp now used by billions of people globally. But if Google can get enough partners on board, well, it could reclaim at least some ground.

But that’s not quite all, Truecaller is also introducing payments, too.
The company has partnered with ICICI Bank to enable peer-to-peer payments between Truecaller users. ICICI Bank is providing the technology behind the service, Truecaller confirmed. Beyond holding the requisite licenses for the service, the bank is using India’s UPI payment system to enable it. Truecaller Pay will open to users of any bank in India, both parties said.







Sources Say that the company isn’t making its service open to third parties at this point, but it is open to integrating other services where it sees a match. Likewise, the company is initially introducing these features in India but it isn’t discounting the potential to introduce similar offerings in other parts of the world.
“If we are able to find success with these kinda of services [in India], then we could replicate a similar model in other markets,” Kim Fai Kok, director of communications at Truecaller, Says. “There are big opportunities in markets like Kenya and Nigeria, [but] we need to focus and make sure we get the first rollout right.”

Truecaller is far from the only company attacking the opportunity around mobile platforms in India, which is a key growth market for tech. The country’s online population is tipped to reach 450 million-465 million people by June 2017, according to a recent report co-authored by the Internet and Mobile Association of India, widening the audience of potential e-commerce customers. China and the U.S. currently dominate in terms of e-commerce spending, but the value of online sales in India is predicted to reach $48 billion by 2020, analyst firm Forrester claimed.

More wider, an alliance with Truecaller is a tacit admission from Google that it is struggling to find an audience for its latest messaging apps, Duo and Allo. Despite product quality, Google is years late to the messaging and calling app space, which WhatsApp dominates in India and many other emerging markets. Piggybacking with Truecaller is a logical move for both, but again it remains to be seen if the combination can break the network effect that has made WhatsApp, which added voice calls in 2015 and video calls last year, the world’s most successful messaging service with more than one billion active users.