Over the past two years, Truecaller has become one of the fastest growing apps in Africa and has consistently been topping the App Store Charts across the continent. Truecaller also considered to many as an Unicorn (company valued at 1 billion USD).
The Truecaller app, which allows people to see who’s calling and filter out spam calls and SMS, has already more than 50 million users in Africa and more then 250 million globally. The service is identifying more than half a billion calls on a monthly basis in the region, and 50 percent of all SMS users receive is considered as spam.
With numbers like that, we wanted to bring in someone who has a background in scaling companies and establishing brands, and for that, we hired Zakaria Hersi to spearhead our expansion in Sub-Sahara Africa! Zak has helped the Swedish investment firm Kinnevik launch Saltside in Nigeria, as well as opening offices in South America for Besedo, and has worked with some of the world’s largest marketplaces (eBay, Match.com, and OLX)
With more than 6 million users in Kenya alone, the user base has grown with over 35 percent compared to last year. The Truecaller app is blocking and filtering out more than 4.4 million calls, and 14 million spam SMS on a monthly basis in the country
Zakaria will be heading Truecaller’s expansion plans in the region as he is the first in the position since Truecaller just set up its Sub – Saharan Africa office in Nairobi.
“I am very excited for the job and the position that I have been put in. I have been using Truecaller as a very avid user but especially I have known the company and the founders from Sweden and I have seen the type of growth that they have had in India and also the type of visions that they have for Africa. My main focus is integrating ourselves within the ecosystem,” said Hersi
He started Orten.io, a platform that, through events and immersive workshops and training of talented women and minorities from low-income areas, works to inspire greater inclusiveness and cooperation to support tech entrepreneurship, in 2016 after nine years of entrepreneurial successes.
Zakaria has helped the Swedish investment firm Kinnevik launch Saltside in Nigeria, as well as opening offices in South America for Besedo, and has worked with some of the world’s largest marketplaces (eBay, Match.com, and OLX)
Zakaria Hersi is an award-winning tech entrepreneur and has been recognized in both Sweden and Africa (Nigeria’s 100 most innovative persons in Technology in 2016,The Future Africa Awards 2014) as a talented innovator.
He is currently a Board Member at Global Village,a non-profit organization in the suburbs of Stockholm. The organization is a platform for community engagement with focus on inclusion, culture, education, democracy and diversity.
Zakaria holds a Masters Degree in Business Administration and Marketing from Stockholm University.
