Sweden-headquartered phone directory app Truecaller announced on Wednesday that it is locally storing the Indian users' data to ensure transparency and provide faster and more reliable services. The company becomes one of the first international technology companies to proactively take this step.
"Truecaller is one of the first international tech companies to proactively take the step of storing its Indian users' data locally in India. This is a user-centric move that is aimed at safeguarding personal data and encouraging more transparency in the ecosystem," Truecaller said in a statement. With locally stored data, and significant investments in its Indian infrastructure, Truecaller has also doubled the search result speed for its core services like caller ID and spam detection, it added.
It said for the overseas part of the transaction, the data may be stored in a foreign country.
The draft of Personal Data Protection Bill, 2018 -- drafted by a high-level panel headed by Justice B N Srikrishna -- also restricts and imposes conditions on the cross-border transfer of personal data.
The central bank’s data localisation policy had elicited mixed response from the payment services industry.
The RBI, in April last year, had issued a circular instructing all payments system providers in the country to ensure that data relating to systems operated by them is stored only in India and had set a deadline of October 15, 2018. “All system providers shall ensure that the entire data relating to payment systems operated by them are stored in a system only in India. This data should include the full end-to-end transaction details/information collected/carried/processed as part of the message/payment instruction,” RBI said in its 6 April 2018 circular.
Truecaller pointed out that it was already storing payments data of its Indian users, who use its unified payment interface (UPI)-based payment service in India. 
