Truecaller Appoints Director of Partnerships for Africa

Truecaller has recently appointed Zakaria Hersi as the Director of Partnerships for Africa.

Truecaller also announced its partnership with VConnect, Nigeria’s leading business discovery and engagement platform, where Truecaller has integrated VConnect’s Business directory to its app. This allows users to efficiently identify VConnect’s service providers.

Last year Truecaller and VConnect launched Truecaller Priority in Nigeria enabling businesses on VConnect to quickly identify if a call is a potential prospect. Many users searching for businesses on VConnect.com, call the numbers mentioned in their profile. These numbers, which are routed through VConnect intermediate numbers, are marked as ‘Priority’ in the Truecaller app.

Director, Growth and Partnerships at VConnect Naveen Luthra, said: “This step of integrating our business listings on Truecaller platform, will further empower SMEs in Nigeria to get more visibility and new customers. This partnership deepens the relationships between two organisations, to bring about digital inclusion of small businesses here.”

Truecaller further revealed it will be setting up headquarters in Nairobi and that the newly recruited Zakaria Hersi as Director of Partnerships for Africa, will be spearheading its expansion in the region where he forges partnerships with various eco-system players.

“I’m excited to join Truecaller in such interesting juncture. My aim is to build upon the strong foundation that we have as a brand here and double up the pace of our growth and ambitions in the market. In the coming months we plan to roll out more partnerships and new services localized for the market.” Hersi said.

Hersi has a background of launching marketplaces around the world, and has helped the Swedish Investment firm Kinnevik launch Saltside in Nigeria where he was the Managing Director. He also had two stints working for Swedish based company Besedo, where he helped open offices in Colombia and Mauritius. During his period at Besedo he worked closely with some of the largest marketplaces like eBay, Match.com and OLX in Europe and South America, and was responsible for post-merger integration of the company and French AI company IoSquare.

Late last year Truecaller launched its Developer Programme with Truecaller SDK, its mobile identity product for digital start-ups and app developers, and announced that they would be doubling down on their monetisation initiative, and introduce its Truecaller Priority programme in sub-Sahara Africa.

Truecaller has become one of the fastest growing consumer apps in Africa, and has consistently been topping the app store charts across the continent for the past two years.