“Dialing up on Privacy – solving a problem for every buyer / online consumer”

By Pratima Harigunani

Aditya Vuchi

If you are not paying for a product, then ‘you’ are the product – a well-known cliché ever since the “free” economy started. The always-on, no hassles, one-touch communications have their serious downsides. Privacy is the biggest casualty, third-party data monetization, omnichannel marketing, customer proximity, abuse of access to the personal device. How does Aditya Vuchi, Founder and CEO, Doosra then address these issues? Let’s hear him how he does it with white-listing, blocker management, KYC, user-level control, and more.

If you are uncomfortable sharing your personal number at every merchant outlet, then this virtual alternate number could finally solve your problem.

What spurred this idea? Does it have any practical precedents in India or abroad?

Doosra was born from a bitter personal experience of mine, a few years ago - when 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 my past experience in digital marketing, I fully understood the travesty of sharing personal information with businesses and the resultant behavioral profiling that is done for advertising purposes. This incident gave me the idea of creating a publicly-shareable mobile number that can be given at places where a person is uncomfortable sharing their personal number.

We started working on it in the summer of 2019, partnering with telecom operators to bring this unique and innovative product to market.

How exactly does it work – especially when services like TrueCaller and messenger platforms immediately, and easily, identify users with their phone numbers?

Doosra blocks all calls by default. All text messages sent to this secondary number are stored within the app. However, users always have the option to add a “trusted number” so you can whitelist the contact, and their calls will come through. The other way to allow calls is to turn off the call blocker time, location, or until when you need to.

How does this align with regulatory needs and KYC, compliance areas if it promises privacy and anonymity?

During the sign-up process, we mandate the standard e-KYC process, similar to other telecom connections. This KYC can be done digitally on the app, by verifying a government-issued ID with a selfie-and takes no more than two-three minutes.

Anything that we can pick from examples like Phantom Secure and Anom about privacy-oriented solutions being more vulnerable to wrong/criminal use? Where does that leave users who are law-abiding and just need some solution for their privacy?

Doosra’s platform is meant to protect an individual’s privacy from telemarketers and scamsters by blocking all calls by default; effectively giving them control over who can reach out to them. It is not an anonymous platform to ensure an individual is untraceable. All Doosra numbers are mandatorily linked to a primary number, which ensures the safeguards are similar to regular telecom numbers. Since we don’t allow outgoing calls, it is highly unlikely for unscrupulous elements to use the Doosra platform to engage in nefarious activities.

Do you think we will ever come close to a first-party data system that works in a decentralised way - with users themselves in control of their data, and its monetization, as per individual preferences?

As we enter a web3 world, the end-user will be a key stakeholder in all transactions through decentralisation and pseudonymity. This means that the value extraction from users for free by the big tech giants that are already being called into question will fade away. So, people owning their personal data and making it available to service providers and brands to lend them goods and services will be natural; and monetisation will be more equitable across all parties.

What is your next level of plans and long-term vision for this venture? Anything to tap the distributed workforce market for enterprises?

One of the common use cases at Doosra is the ability to give your Doosra number at buy-sell marketplaces. This means brokers and vendors will reach out to the consumer. We now allow a Doosra user to set a time-based passcode that can be shared along with a Doosra number so that these ephemeral transactions can be handled seamlessly. Our goal is to reach three to five million users in the next 18 - 24 months.

Doosra helps solve the privacy concerns that all users today have when shopping online or offline, even when purchasing cup of “chai” or coffee.

Any big-picture view (Good side as well as challenges) about the Telco space in India- Specially with inflection points like 5G and Pvt LTE?

We don’t see ourselves as a mobile operator as much as a digital identity platform. To that end, Doosra will need to provide more digital identity products and services in the privacy space where personal data is created and managed on edge devices through IPFS protocols.

Vuchi is Founder and CEO, Doosra

pratimah@cybermedia.co.in