Scam calls have been causing headaches for many, with Telecom Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw even advising caution when answering unknown numbers. According to a survey by McAfee, about half of the victims of AI call scams in India lost more than Rs 50,000 each. While the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) is working on implementing a caller identification system, private companies are stepping in to help combat fraud and spam calls.
Enter Naam, a startup based in Jaipur, founded by telecom industry veteran Arpit Tak and his college friend Ramesh Chaudhary in 2023. Their aim is to offer a homegrown alternative to Truecaller.
Naam’s main focus is to flag fraudulent numbers. Its system has a database of more than 500 million phone numbers.
Truecaller serve with a Caller ID and scam protection service. Similarly, Naam app uses AI to find and stop spammers and scammers. However, the main focus of it is giving users control over their data privacy using data science.
Naam’s app is significantly lighter at just 5.9 MB and is offering all the features such as automatic spam identification blocking and instant number identification completely free for early birds. Moreover, there will be no annoying pop-up ads.
In the future, Naam sees lots of ways to make money. One potential avenue is through verified caller ID programs, where companies pay to have their calls labeled as verified. Tak says it is important for companies that talk directly to customers to make sure their calls get picked up. But there are still some problems to solve like fixing delays with caller ID and making sure privacy-conscious people feel comfortable using the app.
Naam currently supports nine Indian languages including Hindi, Bengali, Marathi, Tamil and Punjabi.
