alan mamedi

The telephone is the most useful invention by humans. The era changed and brought the revolution in the telephone industry, jumping from two-piece landlines to a chordless smartphone. But, one thing that was constant, the reception of blank calls and cold calls. Even at the time of landlines, people could not identify the caller, as there was no medium that could show the identity of the caller. But, yes, later on, the caller Ids, did help to an extent. However, it was still impossible to recognise the callers from the new numbers. The same problem remained in the time of the mobiles and smartphones as well. But, Alan Mamedi, a developer from Sweden, came to the rescue and gifted the much-awaited app Truecaller to the world.

Early Life

Mamedi was born on 30 October 1984, in an Iranian family. His mother was a Kurd, and his father was an Iranian political leader. After the Iranian revolution took place, his family brought him to Sweden. He was a bright student and completed a B.sc degree in Computer Science, from The Royal Institute of Technology, in Stockholm Sweden.

After completing his education, Mamedi started working as a Salesman at The Phone House and stayed at the same company for two years. With an experience of two years and a graduate degree in Computer Science, Mamedi got inspired to start his own company. In 2006, Mamedi founded ‘Bidding.se’, an auction website, where the one with the lowest bid would win the auction. The website was a success, and Mamedi received an offer to sell it, within three months of its launch.

In 2007, Mamedi again came with another product, Möbeljakt.se, that became the largest search engine, working in Sweden, for the home interior. In 2008, he started working as the Chief Architect at Birdstep Technology and Företagsinformation i Mediaportalen, at the same position, for the next two years.

In 2009, Mamedi launched Jobbigt.se, an employer review website, known to be the biggest employer network in Sweden. Through the website, people could post reviews about their current or previous employers.

Founding Truecaller

After the launch of Jobbigt.se, Mamedi started receiving calls from those employers, who had got bad reviews on Jobbigt.se. The employers wanted Mamedi to delete those bad reviews as those were affecting their reputation.

This incident made Mamedi, think and discuss the matter with his old friend Nami Zarringhalam, as he was receiving unlimited calls regarding the same. The discussion also included the issue of increasing cold-calls, invading the privacy of people. At the time, there was no such software that could help in avoiding those kinds of calls and identify the new numbers. The two came to the conclusion that there must be a software that can handle those issues. The software must have a caller ID so that people could decide the priority of the call. With the intense discussion, Mamedi and Zarringhalam finally decided to create a new app; Truecaller.

On 1 July 2009, Mamedi released the initial version of Truecaller, under the name of his company True Software Scandinavia AB. The company was founded by Alan Mamedi and Nami Zarringhalam in the same year and is situated in Stockholm, Sweden.

Initially, the app was launched for the BlackBerry smartphones, but due to huge success, it was also released for the Symbian and Microsoft Windows mobile phones. On 23 September 2009, the app became available for the iOS and Android phone users. By the year 2012, it was also launched for the RIM Blackberry, Windows Phone, and the Nokia Series 40, and it grew to five million global users in the same year.

Truecaller in 2012, received US$1.3 million funding from OpenOcean, a venture capital. In 2014, it also received an investment of $18.8 million from Sequoia Capital and $60 million from Niklas Zennstrom’s Atomico investment firm and from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.

Due to the increased user base in India, Truecaller also launched another app, exclusively for India, with name Truemessenger, that can identify the sender of a message.