Startup Circle: How does Doosra help secure personal identity with a secondary, virtual mobile number?

Currently, where everywhere you go, you have to give out a mobile number. Thus, it can become very annoying, and it takes away your privacy. There, a virtual business phone number allows you to use an alibi same number everywhere. This is what Doosra does. The word Doosra literally means secondary. Thus, with the help of the website and app, you can manage spam calls, messages etc without an additional sim or device.

In conversation with CiOL, Founder and CEO of Doosra, Mr Aditya Vuchi talks about the startup and how the Indian market is responding to it. Aditya is a serial entrepreneur who previously founded MediaMint (a global marketing operations firm) and Zippr (an addressing technology company).

What is Doosra about? Tell us about the team

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.

You can use Doosra anywhere you need to give a mobile number. All messages and OTPs arrive in the Doosra app, just like any other number. Our customers are actively using Doosra in Online classifieds, Malls, Supermarkets, Delivery websites, Messaging platforms (like Whatsapp, Signal, Telegram and others), Insurance portals, Dating and matrimonial sites, Car buying sites, buy/sell marketplaces etc. Some features of the app include a Smart Call Blocker, calls for trusted service providers like Swiggy, Zomato, Ola; a free voicemail service to help both callers and customer. But most importantly, our userbase can securely callback people that have reached them without ever revealing their personal information. This call-bridging facility is one of its kind facility in India.

We even have Doosra Pro, a KYC-enabled, more flexible edition that allows users and small businesses to use a Doosra Number. Some notable features include Official support for all messaging platforms, Indefinite control of call blocker, Unlimited trusted contacts and Multi-device login (upto 3 devices).

The team at Doosra is small (15-member strong and agile). We aim to ensure the best user experience for this new and innovative concept.

How did you come up with the idea?

Doosra was born from a bitter personal experience. I was shopping at a sporting goods store but decided to walk away after the billing clerk mandated that I share my personal mobile number for “billing” purposes. With experience in digital marketing, I fully understood the travesty of sharing personal information with businesses and the resultant behavioural profiling for advertising purposes. But this incident gave the idea of creating a publicly - shareable mobile number that one can give at places where a person is uncomfortable sharing their personal number.

This is a very different concept, how is the Indian market adapting it?

Yes, the concept of a virtual mobile number for consumers is new to the market. But there is significant latent demand for it. In fact, a simple Google search for “Virtual mobile number India” clearly shows people want it. With the advent of digitisation of all aspects of social living, people must manage their online presence and digital identities more carefully. As a result, the timing of Doosra’s entry into the market could not be better. Our initial customers are privacy advocates, online shoppers, IT knowledge workers and urban women. We expect the Tier-1 cities to initially adopt Doosra before moving into other towns and cities.

What is your business/market growth?

While it's only been a quarter since the launch of Doosra, the momentum has been solid. We currently see a 30% weekly increase in call volume; thus meaning that people are not just buying a Doosra number but actively using it as well. In fact, 70% of our customer base is opting for Pro compared to the essential edition.

The pandemic has affected every sector. How are you coping?

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 thus, Doosra’s privacy-focused mobile number was very well received.

What are your Post-Covid plans?

We plan to accelerate our go-to-market strategy in the next 6-9 months. There are two major trends that we are bullish about:

• The return to normalcy has started with the vaccine announcement. We expect resurgent economic activity giving more opportunity for people to use a Doosra Number.

• Privacy concerns: With the recent uproar due to privacy concerns of Whatsapp and others, people will want to maintain the privacy of their personal information and Doosra is a great tool that enables it.

Funding

Doosra is bootstrapped and we plan to initiate a fundraiser in a few weeks.