While the gravity of India’s spam call scenario needs no new real-world illustration, call identification and spam blocking platform Truecaller’s 2025 India Insights Report further illustrates a worrying trend that’s pointing in one direction — the volume of spam communication with an intent to scam, will only get worse. The new avenues scammers are unlocking fast include identity verification scams, impersonation using familiar institutions, multi-step fraud combining messages and calls, and AI-generated voice messages.
Rishit Jhunjhunwala, CEO of Truecaller, tells HT that scams are becoming more and more voluntary. “People themselves transfer out the money, thinking the transaction was legitimate. Digital arrest is a perfect example. This is as opposed to involuntary scams such as account or device takeovers, or OTP fraud,” he explains while adding, “These are scams that sound routine and even exciting at times, promising something that is too good to be true.”
There is also a perceptible migration of attempted scams to third-party messaging platforms, beyond the default SMS and phone apps, to messaging apps including WhatsApp and direct messages on Instagram. As these threats evolve, trust will depend increasingly on behavioural context, community reporting, and long-term activity patterns rather than isolated signals.
“Scams are also expanding on surfaces in addition to calls; they are moving to SMS (fake electricity bill or fake traffic challan scams) and also to WhatsApp and Telegram,” Jhunjhunwala points out.
Also Read:Indians spend 102 hours a year second guessing scam messages, McAfee finds
A crisis, by the numbers
Truecaller’s 2025 India Insights Report lays bare the reality, a solution for this challenge seemingly still quite distant. The platform notes that as many as 4,168 crore spam calls were identified by the Truecaller app installed by smartphone users in India, alongside 12,903 crore spam messages being identified.
“In a country where connectivity is powering opportunity at every level, trust has become our most valuable digital asset. Fraud today is not just a technical problem, it is a human one. It exploits fear, urgency, and uncertainty in moments that matter most,” notes Jhunjhunwala.
A worrying metric that the Truecaller’s India Insights Report highlights is that of the total detected calls with an intent to scam unsuspecting users, 770 crore of these fraudulent calls were detected to be impersonating banks, government authorities, payment platforms, and well-known brands. “Additionally, scammers are increasingly targeting the elderly segment because they are most vulnerable and there is social stigma attached to reporting the scam as well,” says Jhunjhunwala.
This is as close to a real-world sample size as one would get about the spam communication landscape in the country, with this report based on actual spam classification signals from around 320 million Truecaller users in the country.
With Truecaller’s next big feature called Family Protection expected to roll out in India in the coming weeks, users will have an ability to create a family group of up to five users, and the administrator will get a notification if a member in that group gets a suspected scam call. Additionally, there are further controls to manage protection levels, and share number blocklists with all family members, while specific to Android will be an ability to step in real-time to help a family member when a suspicious call is received.
Truecaller has said Family Protection will be available for free, with hope that adoption and utility will unlock long-term revenue, as families would look to subscribe to the Premium subscription tier with additional tools including advanced spam blocking, automatic rejection of high-risk numbers and removing in-app ads. This also marks a moment for Truecaller when the utility goes beyond simple call and message identification.
“Our responsibility is to make sure that no Indian has to choose between staying connected and staying safe. Our focus at Truecaller is simple — help people stay connected without compromising their safety and stopping risk before it turns into loss,” he adds. The platform notes that the user community, which reports numbers from which spam calls are being made or messages are being sent, helped other users significantly. Community reporting helped prevent 1,189 crore calls from reaching users, the report notes.
With an average time of 1.8 minutes per scam call, Truecaller notes that total spam identified and blocked saved users a collective of 21.7 lakh hours of time every day, and 1.5 crore hours per week. The platform is readying to add a unique free Family Protection feature to its caller identification application for Android phones and the Apple iPhone.
It is not just that voice calls on the mobile network or using apps such as WhatsApp for calls are the only concern. Spam messages, such as SMS or WhatsApp messages, were particularly noted for increasing significantly, particularly in the second half of 2025. As legitimate alerts and fraudulent messages increasingly share the same digital space, users are being forced to make faster and more complex judgments, raising the cost of even small mistakes, the report illustrates a worrying trend.
“AI is creating another new opportunity for scammers because now it becomes less human dependent and can easily impersonate voices/personas,” Jhunjhunwala explains.
A battle with no end in sight
The latest data from Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C) indicates that Indians lost ₹19,813 crore to fraud and cheating cases in 2025, with 21.77 lakh complaints registered on the National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal. Around 77% of these losses stemmed from fraudulent investment schemes, making scams increasingly sophisticated and harder to spot.
There have been broader measures as well, to tackle an exponential rise in scam attempts on unsuspecting users. Telecom operators including Bharti Airtel followed by Reliance Jio and Vi have rolled out network-level spam detection for calls and messages, as well as malicious links often included in such messages, to warn users against attempts to interact. Vi too has since added a spam call and message detection feature. There has also been a push for CNAP, or Calling Name Presentation, for incoming calls — this will be helpful in instances where Truecaller’s database doesn’t have any identification data reported by other users.
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has directed banks to adopt a secure numbering scheme for official communication — they must now use 1600 series for service and transaction communication and 1400 series for promotional calls. In January, the Supreme Court directed the Department of Telecommunications to propose tougher SIM issuance norms to fight the increase in ‘digital arrest’ scams.
This month, security firm McAfee’s 2026 State of the Scamiverse report for India suggested that an average person spends as many as 102 hours a year trying to determine between an SMS, email, WhatsApp message or an incoming phone call, whether it is genuine or fake. The report also says that 82% of surveyed Indians say they are now more cautious about opening messages from unknown senders.
