Global mobile phone directory Truecaller receives $60 million from US tech funds

Truecaller, a global mobile phone directory and caller identification service, had secured $60 million in funding from US tech funds and lured a Skype founder to its board, reports quoted a Swedish startup a saying on Wednesday.

The Stockholm-based company received funding from Skype co-founder Niklas Zennstrom's Atomico investment firm as also from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, an investor in US messaging companies Twitter and Snapchat, according to a Reuters report.

The company would use the money to hire staff, develop products and expand in new markets, it added.

The mobile app and web site allow its 85 million users search for people anywhere in the world by name or phone number through the contents of their phone books and additionally allow users identification of callers before answering. It had gained significant popularity in Asia and the Middle East, where unwanted, or "spam" calls were prevalent.

According to Zennstrom, who would join the Truecaller board as special advisor, Truecaller was solving a major pain point among smart phone owners who were looking for a better way to manage their contacts and always had the right information they needed to stay connected.

According to Truecaller, while it was primarily focused on growing the number of users, it offered a premium service starting at $1.99 a month offering features such as seeing who had viewed their profile and sending contact requests to people outside their network.

The company, which was started in 2009 and now counted 85 million users, would use the funding to develop products, increase its staff and expand around the globe, aiming to become the ''Google of online phone directory,'' according to chief executive officer and co-founder Alan Mamedi, Bloomberg reported.

Truecaller said Kleiner partner John Doerr, Atomico managing partner Mattias Ljungman, and Insight Venture Partners' Murdock would join its board, along with Atomico founder Niklas Zennstrom.

''It is great to see a team from Sweden that's re-thinking how we communicate and scaling their technology globally,'' Zennstrom, also co-founder of Web video-conferencing company Skype, said in the statement. ''We look forward to working with the team to help them reach the next 100 million users.''

According to commentators, competition was heating up in the messaging market. This week saw, Facebook Inc complete its acquisition of mobile-message service WhatsApp for about $19 billion, and according to a person with knowledge of the matter Yahoo! Inc was close to investing in disappearing-photo app Snapchat Inc.