Holaa! A new mobile app from India identifies callers and blocks spam

India is a unique market for mobile phones in more respects than one. It has a massive base of feature phone users. Large numbers of them are shifting to smartphones as more and more affordable devices – like the just launched Xiaomi Redmi Note – become available. But the ways in which Indians use their affordable smartphones is very different from those in other regions. This creates opportunities for mobile app developers to address some unique pain points.

Take for example a Nielsen study last year which found that 84 percent of smartphone users in India have pre-paid connections – the highest percentage for any country in the world. Compare that to the US where it’s the other way round – 85 percent of smartphone users have post-paid plans. Even in China, nearly half the smartphone users have post-paid plans.

The problem in a predominantly pre-paid phone connection market like India is that caller identities are often a mystery. So people end up taking a lot of unwanted calls and spam. That’s why an app like TrueCaller, developed in Sweden, is more popular in India than in the West.

Now there’s a new app called Holaa!, just launched today, which claims to help smartphone users manage their calls better. It’s a product of Nimbuzz, which shifted its base from the Netherlands to India in 2012 to serve a growing Indian user base for voice over IP (VoIP), messaging, and mobile advertising services. Holaa! was made in India by local developers. Vikas Saxena, CEO of Nimbuzz, explains to Tech in Asia how this app identifies and meets specific consumer needs of the region:

Our experience in emerging markets gives us insights into user behavior and allows us to deliver a more optimized product. To give you an example, Holaa! is 30 percent smaller in app size than Truecaller and 30 percent less RAM intensive. This means the application can be downloaded across a wider variety of devices, including the lower end handsets, and ensures minimum impact on the phone’s battery.
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