The Indian government has asked Swedish caller id major truecaller for access to its database for citing privacy invasion. Speaking exclusively to CNBC-TV18’s Kritika Saxena, its co-founder & CEO Alan Mamedi says that Swedish laws prevent the company from giving access to the government or any government for that matter.
More importantly, he says that India is expected go grow its subscriber base by over double in 2015, "So for as India is obviously our most important market. It is a biggest one we just recently surpassed 100 million users and over 60 million is in India only. Projections are around 120-150 million in India by the end of this year. I would probably be disappointed if it is below 150 million".
Expansion of true dialer and a new product is also on the anvil!
Below is the transcript of Alan Mamedi's interview.
Q: The government has asked for access to Turecaller’s data base citing privacy invasion issues. What are the discussions so far with the government and where do you stand with respect to the regulatory concerns evident as far as your sector is concerned in India?
A: It all boils down to the core values of the company what do you want to stand for. For us, we are Swedish company we host all our services ourself in Sweden and they are locked down. The only people who has access to those machines are ourself and in fact if we would share any information to any government if it is Swedish government or Indian government that is actually illegal in Sweden.
Q: But the government has asked you. So far what is the discussion or what is the dialogue that you had with the government?
A: We do respect every kind of entity in that sense but we also have to respect the Swedish laws.
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