Public Relations has entered a bold new era. No longer just a back-office function, it has transformed into a strategic powerhouse shaping brand reputation and influence. Companies and leaders now see PR not as an afterthought, but as an essential force driving credibility, trust, and long-term success. The industry has undergone a radical shift with the rise of social media, fundamentally transforming PR strategies. Influencers now play a crucial role in shaping consumer perceptions and engagement. PR is no longer confined to securing media visibility; it has expanded into a dynamic, results-driven discipline focused on meaningful interactions and measurable outcomes. With a younger, more digitally savvy audience emerging, PR professionals face new challenges. Brands and practitioners must be more agile, data-driven, and proactive in crafting business solutions that resonate with their audience. The future of PR lies in adaptability, authenticity, and strategic storytelling that build lasting trust and impact. In our exclusive weekly column, PR Conversation, Adgully interacts with leading business leaders to gain their exclusive views and insights on various trends in the PR and communications industry. In today?ÇÖs interconnected world, effective communication is paramount for global brands, especially those navigating the complexities of technology and data privacy. Truecaller, a name synonymous with caller identification, has evolved into a comprehensive communication platform, serving hundreds of millions of users worldwide. Leading the charge in shaping Truecaller?ÇÖs narrative and safeguarding its reputation is its Global Head of Corporate Communications, Hitesh Raj Bhagat. With a career dedicated to strategic messaging in the tech sector, Bhagat offers a unique perspective on managing brand perception, combating misinformation, and fostering transparency in a rapidly evolving digital landscape. In conversation with Adgully, Hitesh Raj Bhagat speaks about his role, the challenges of communicating for a global tech brand, and the impactful initiatives that define Truecaller?ÇÖs commitment to safer and smarter communication, and more. What does a day in your role as Global Head of Corporate Communications at Truecaller typically look like? It?ÇÖs not too different from any other tech company actually. Our team is spread across a few locations in India and Stockholm. We have check-ins with our team members and on different days of the week, we have an all hands meeting, a product forum to discuss upcoming improvements to the service, Lab Days where anyone can come up with ideas for the next big thing. Globally, we are a lean team of just about 450 people. So, we use a lot of external help. For instance, we have two PR agencies in India and others that help us target different parts of the world where we need to communicate or interact with the media. We sync with them as well, plus there are tools that we use every day for monitoring and analysis. What are the key challenges in managing communications for a global tech brand like Truecaller? I always say this to people, that simply going online and searching for Truecaller is probably the worst way to gather accurate information about the company. The reason is that we have various entities that keep spreading misinformation about us ?Çô and this exists in both written form and video. Truecaller has been publicly listed since 2021 ?Çô all financials, revenue streams and a lot of other information is public. So, a big challenge for us is always trying to correct the misinformation about Truecaller that exists out there. For example, a big misconception is that Truecaller automatically uploads contacts once you get the app and that is how it builds a large global database. This is false ?Çô Truecaller is community-powered. There are millions of signals, name corrections and name suggestions received daily, which the algorithms are constantly refining. It?ÇÖs like a living, breathing thing that has to constantly stay a step ahead of scammers. Another example of miscommunication is that Truecaller reads all your SMS and then somehow uses this to target you with ads. This is also false ?Çô Truecaller SMS works entirely offline, on-device, powered by an on-device machine learning system. No SMS content is sent to our servers ?Çô the app locally categorises SMS, removes all spam/ scam, gives you reminders and shows you all relevant information using cards (we call them Message IDs). Truecaller has evolved from a caller ID app to a broader communication platform. How has the communication strategy shifted with this evolution? That?ÇÖs a great point. In the very early days of Truecaller, it was solving a very basic problem ?Çô who is calling? But as consumers, our communication needs have also evolved a lot. Truecaller has also evolved; it is not just a simple caller ID but a lot more. Truecaller can give you the intent behind a call, empowering you with a lot of recent, relevant and powerful information about the caller. And I can give you an example of how this works. If I receive a call, just seeing a name does not really tell me who that person is and what they intend to do with my time. Community markings can tell me if the caller is a spammer (a time waste scenario) or is it a scammer (which can be far more dangerous or malicious) which can lead to real losses. Additionally, it is useful to know what kind of scammer is it? What are other people saying about this caller? Is it possibly a legitimate business calling you? If yes, why are they calling you? Verified businesses on Truecaller can assign a call reason that you can see even without answering the call. Or you can set a time for the business to call you back in case you are busy. We do have to keep talking about these aspects. What are some of the key brand perception changes you?ÇÖve driven in recent years? Some time ago, a lot of people thought Truecaller was a Chinese app or had some very strong Chinese connections. Neither of which was ever true. So, we had to drive home the message about what we are and what we stand for. The vision of the company is to make tomorrow?ÇÖs communication safer, smarter and more efficient. Fun fact, even though Truecaller is headquartered in Stockholm, the largest workforce is in India. Our largest office is Bengaluru, which is a full stack development team too. India is also our largest user base, over 300 million active users and growing organically, almost at the pace of smartphone growth itself. How do you ensure brand consistency across multiple international markets? We have a team spread across a few regions ?Çô mostly India and Stockholm. We have a strong brand team in place that looks at all aspects related to our brand and how it is represented. Across regions, there are some nuances of course, but while we do try to stay local and speak to a consumer in their own language, we maintain a steady level of consistency when it comes to how Truecaller is represented in various markets. In the age of data privacy concerns, how does Truecaller approach transparency in communication? This is an important subject to discuss. I always like to give this example ?Çô just go to a search engine and search for your name. You?ÇÖll find a lot of information about yourself on various websites. In some cases, I have not just seen phone numbers, social media and photos, but also various IDs and even full home addresses. You can try to start removing all that information from all these places, but guess what: you will not be very successful. On the other hand, Truecaller is compliant with various privacy laws globally, starting with GDPR. Even in countries that don?ÇÖt have any privacy laws or are developing them, we have been offering very detailed privacy controls for many years now. You can actually permanently unlist yourself and remove all your info from Truecaller within 24 hours. You can easily delete your account, download your data or remove previously authorised apps. A detailed privacy section in the app, a dedicated unlisting webpage and an extensive privacy center online are all part of this transparency that we provide to all consumers, regardless of their location. Could you share a campaign or initiative that you are particularly proud of? I can give you a couple of examples here. One of the things that Truecaller stands for is women?ÇÖs safety. Truecaller is more than just caller ID: it is often the first line of defence for women who might face harassment, stalking or unwanted messages/ calls through their phones. And this is something we often communicate and provide resources for. Another example: during the worst Covid waves in the country, scammers had a field day, scamming people under the guise of providing oxygen concentrators, life saving drugs or hospital beds. We were working with the Home Ministry and various Police authorities to actively mark Covid Scams so that people could stay protected at their most vulnerable. Over a few weeks of this exercise, Covid related scams could be brought under control, providing a relief to consumers who could instead focus on their and loved one?ÇÖs health. This is a perfect example of a public-private partnership that focuses on solving a real problem. We also partnered with other companies ?Çô FactChecker and MapmyIndia, for example. FactChecker would help verify numbers for hospitals, health centres, Covid test facilities that we could list. MapmyIndia, India?ÇÖs homegrown mapping solution, had marked out over 60,000 Covid related Points of Interest during the second Covid wave. In a rapid, non-commercial partnership with MapmyIndia, we integrated their maps right inside Truecaller. This allowed anyone to find help quickly, call important numbers and even navigate to nearby hospitals and test centres. Even now, we have a section in the app called Government Services. It is an offline, state-wise, Truecaller-verified directory of important government service and ministerial phone numbers. You can search for what you need and directly dial a number from there. It works even without an internet connection.