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In an interview with TechGraph, Aditya Vuchi, Founder and CEO, Doosra, said, “Cross-pollination of data will be frowned upon by consumers and brands will have to take this seriously.”
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TechGraph: Could you help give a sense of how far Doosra has come in its one year of existence? From when it began to where it is now?
Aditya Vuchi: Since our launch, we’ve blocked over 1.5 Mn and 500k calls from over 45k telemarketers. We also see significant interest from businesses that would like to use our telecom stack to better serve their customers.
Just in the last 2 months, we’ve added marquee names to our list of Doosra users. Our goal is to reach 3-5Mn users in the next 18-24 months
TechGraph: Could you walk us through the key services offered by Doosra?
Aditya Vuchi: Doosra is a secondary, virtual mobile number that can be shared anywhere; malls, supermarkets, delivery apps, etc. without worry about phone number abuse from telemarketers and scamsters. By blocking all calls by default, Doosra gives you complete control of who can reach and who cannot.
We have partnered with telecom operators to give a 10-digit virtual mobile number to our customers. This means there is no additional SIM card or device needed to operate.
Users can simply sign-up on our website and then download the iOS or Android App to manage the call and message preferences.
The salient features of Doosra include:
● Smart Call Blocker: While all calls are blocked, Doosra allows you to receive certain calls based on the Caller ID or location. With the Doosra Pro edition, you can simply turn off the call blocker as long as you wish with a simple toggle.
● Trusted Services: Doosra has partnered with leading delivery providers like Swiggy, Zomato, Ola, and others to ensure calls from your favorite services are not blocked when they are en-route for a delivery. This is done through a telecom-level integration.
● Voicemail: All users can activate voicemail. When a call is blocked, the caller has the option of leaving a voice message and the customer can listen to it and decide to call back or not.
● Secure Call–back: Doosra’s customers can securely call back people that have reached them without ever revealing their personal information. This is done through a call-bridging facility that is provided for the first time to consumers in India.
TechGraph: What is the state of privacy-focused VoIP service providers in the Indian market?
Aditya Vuchi: It is important to note that we are not in the VOIP space but work with telecom partners to bring the Doosra service to consumers. In terms of privacy-focused products, we are seeing the emergence of privacy and control as an important aspect of daily lives.
The ability for consumers to give explicit consent to their data is gaining traction. Browsers like Brave, phone number services like Doosra will become an integral part of the privacy stack in the digital ecosystem. Cross-pollination of data will be frowned upon by consumers and brands will have to take this seriously.
TechGraph: How do you see technologies namely AI, Data Center, and Cloud, with regards to their relevance across the mobile network operators? How does the future look like?
Aditya Vuchi: Emerging technologies like AI/ML, blockchain, computer vision, etc. are tools to help develop new products that would not have been possible a few years ago. Mobile operators started the transformation to data and data products and their role as an infrastructure provider for the consumers.
Being able to build connected solutions in the IoT space, will mean that our devices will start to become even more invisible. Maintaining separate identities as more of what we do goes digital, will be important. Doosra’s privacy stack will leverage this new technology paradigm.
TechGraph: With the 5G rollout process speeding up, How is Doosra going to capitalize on the same?
Aditya Vuchi: We don’t see ourselves as a mobile operator as much as a digital identity platform. To that end, Doosra will need to provide more ancillary products and services in the privacy space.
TechGraph: What were the challenges while building Doosra finance during the Pandemic?
Aditya Vuchi: Doosra released its mobile app in September 2020 and this week marks the first anniversary of the product.
While we planned to launch around May, we had to postpone the product launch until September as consumer sentiment recovered and people resumed their shopping activities. From a marketing perspective, we had to tweak our approach to focus heavily on digital advertising to get the word out there.
On the product front, we have been generous beneficiaries of the pandemic. As people shopped more online and paid using digital channels, the fear of identity theft was heightened and Doosra’s privacy-focused mobile number was very well received.
TechGraph: How is the response so far of your privacy-focused virtual number service?
Aditya Vuchi: It’s been an incredible journey so far. While we started as a simple service that auto-blocks all calls by default. Based on user feedback, we launched voicemail along with a new Doosra Pro plan. This allows multi-device login, unlimited trusted contacts, and much more.
TechGraph: What are the latest innovations and developments at Doosra?
Aditya Vuchi: One of the common use cases at Doosra is the ability to give your Doosra number at buy-sell marketplaces. This means brokers and vendors will reach out to the consumer. We now allow a Doosra user to set a time-based passcode that can be shared along with a Doosra number so that these ephemeral transactions can be handled seamlessly.