For a country that boasts of its digital public goods infrastructure like Aadhar and UPI, it is a wonder why telecom has been so ignored. After nearly 1500 crore rupees of was reportedly lost to digital fraud in the financial year 2024, the govt’s Trai is finally scrambling to catch up with CPAN or the Calling Name Presentation (CNAP) service, its own version of Truecaller.

Truecaller, the Swedish call-screening company, meanwhile, has been holding the fort for a while now. Users count on it to save them from spam and fraud calls. While TrueCaller maybe looking like a hero in this situation, it is a private company after all. It is using this opportunity to make money from both users and businesses.

But its success in India is also built partially on how inadequate privacy laws are in India. The company has been accused of breaching data privacy norms in the past.

Can Trai replace Truecaller?

Tune in.

(This episode was first published in July, 2024)

DAYBREAK UNWIND RECOMMENDATIONS for “coming of age”

Rahel: Big Mouth, Netflix
Snigdha: The Lives of Girls and Women by Alice Munro and Lady Bird (2017)
Atish Deore: The works of PL Deshpande, a Marathi author and playwright
Shubhangi: Derry Girls (2018)
Brijesh: Where The Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens

Daybreak is now on WhatsApp at +918971108379. For next Thursday’s Unwind, send us your recommendations to us as texts or voice notes. The theme is “favourite translated books.”