Truecaller has publicly criticised the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) over rules governing caller ID apps, arguing that the country's anti-spam framework is undermining its ability to shield consumers from unwanted calls in its largest market. Chief executive Rishit Jhunjhunwala took to X to accuse the regulator of barring Truecaller from displaying community-reported spam data for calls from India's dedicated 1400 and 1600 number series, a restriction he said had allowed those numbers to be abused and eroded trust in legitimate business calls.

The dispute centres on a 2024 framework under which India designated the 1400 series for telemarketing and the 1600 series for service and transactional calls, later mandating businesses to migrate to them to help consumers identify genuine communications and curb spam. Citing internal data, Jhunjhunwala said users had ignored 81% of 1400-series calls and 79% of 1600-series calls over eight months, and manually blocked 74 million such calls. Unable to label them as spam, Truecaller introduced a "Frequently Blocked" badge instead. The criticism followed a report that TRAI had sought powers under the Information Technology Act to act against caller ID apps, including Truecaller, Hiya and Whoscall, for flagging the designated numbers as spam. India accounts for more than 350 million of Truecaller's 500 million monthly active users.