Holaa! A new mobile app from India identifies callers and blocks spam. It’s a challenge to Truecaller

India is a unique market for mobile phones in more respects than one. It has a massive base of feature phone users. Large numbers of them are shifting to smartphones as more and more affordable devices – like the just launched Xiaomi Redmi Note – become available. But the ways in which Indians use their affordable smartphones is very different from those in other regions. This creates opportunities for mobile app developers to address some unique pain points.

Take for example a Nielsen study last year which found that 84 percent of smartphone users in India have pre-paid connections – the highest percentage for any country in the world. Compare that to the US where it’s the other way round – 85 percent of smartphone users have post-paid plans. Even in China, nearly half the smartphone users have post-paid plans.

The problem in a predominantly pre-paid phone connection market like India is that caller identities are often a mystery. So people end up taking a lot of unwanted calls and spam. That’s why an app like Truecaller, developed in Sweden, is more popular in India than in the West.

Now there’s a new app called Holaa!, just launched today, which claims to help smartphone users manage their calls better. It’s a product of Nimbuzz, which shifted its base from the Netherlands to India in 2012 to serve a growing Indian user base for voice over IP (VoIP), messaging, and mobile advertising services. Holaa! was made in India by local developers. Vikas Saxena, CEO of Nimbuzz, explains to Tech in Asia how this app identifies and meets specific consumer needs of the region:

Our experience in emerging markets gives us insights into user behavior and allows us to deliver a more optimized product. To give you an example, Holaa! is 30 percent smaller in app size than Truecaller and 30 percent less RAM intensive. This means the application can be downloaded across a wider variety of devices, including the lower end handsets, and ensures minimum impact on the phone’s battery.

It has a number of other features, such as location-tracking and synchronization of social media and phone contacts. This will raise privacy concerns for many, but the popularity of Truecaller in India suggests that unknown calls are more of a pain for phone users there. Four out of 10 calls that a pre-paid mobile user receives are from unknown numbers, and a quarter of those unknown calls are spam, points out Saxena.

Holaa! is the first product launched by Nimbuzz following its recent acquisition by UK-based New Call Telecom for US$175 million.

“With Nimbuzz becoming a part of the growing New Call International family, its innovative technologies will become a key part of our vision of an integrated ‘my digital life’ ecosystem,” says Nigel Eastwood, CEO of New Call Telecom.

Going forward, Nimbuzz expects to build up Holaa! into a richer product geared for different segments of the market. “The features that you see in the product today are a small representation of the future product journey. Soon, you will start seeing Holaa! shaping up into not just a consumer-oriented solution but also a platform that helps small businesses to manage their calling,” Vikas Saxena tells Tech in Asia.

Emerging markets pose some basic challenges for users, such as poor internet connectivity, and these have been kept in mind while building Holaa!. Right now it’s available for Android devices only. The Holaa! app for iOS will launch soon.