Truecaller acquires payments startup Chillr

BENGALURU/MUMBAI: Swedish caller identification app Truecaller on Wednesday said it has acquired payments startup Chillr to help it roll out credit and financial services to its Indian users. Truecaller boasts about 60% of its user base from India. The financial details of the transaction were not disclosed.
Following the sale, the founders of Chillr — Sony Joy, Anoop Sankar, Mohamed Galib and Lishoy Bhaskaran — and the rest of the organisation will be joining Truecaller.Joy will be the VP of Truecaller Pay. The Stockholm-headquartered company, which has 15 crore users in India, currently employs 150 members globally, of which 70 members are from India. This will include the Chillr staff.
Launched in 2014, Chillr was the first multi-bank payment application that started off as a product from fintech startup MobME. Later, it was carved out from its parent into a separate company as it went on to raise $6 million in a series-A funding from Sequoia Capital in October 2015. The app got a major boost after HDFC Bank chose to allow customers to integrate their accounts with it to facilitate bank-to-bank transfers. Subsequently, HDFC launched its own payments app and since then the interbank payments space has seen the entry of deep-pocketed players like Paytm, PhonePe, Google Tez and WhatsApp Pay. Chillr did not share details of its monthly value and volumes of transactions.
Truecaller also counts Sequoia Capital as an investor. Truecaller made its entry into payments last year by integrating transfers based on the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) through a partnership with ICICI Bank. However, the company’s foray into UPI Payments has had limited success with the app clocking very low volumes. Truecaller did not share details on their monthly value and volumes of transactions.
With the launch of Truecaller Pay 2.0, the company has brought banking and payments features to the forefront of its app, and in the coming months Truecaller is planning on rolling out credit and other financial services to users in India in a mobile-first way. Truecaller, said that Sequoia Capital, a common investor in the two companies, had no role to play in the acquisition.
“After spending time with the founders and the Truecaller team, we have realized that we share a lot of synergies; values; culture; and a sharp focus on user experience. Our road map on payments and financial services which when combined with the scale and resources of Truecaller, can create amazing experiences and solve genuine problems at an accelerated pace,” said Joy, co-founder, Chillr.