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Doosra seeks to simplify business communication with a layer of privacy #PrivacyNama2022

Aditya Vuchi, Founder & CEO, Doosra, talked about protecting mobile user privacy with the offering of ‘virtual mobile number’

privacynama 2022 conference medianama

“…a lot of companies did not just start using it (personal mobile number) as a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) identifier, but also started using it for marketing purposes and that’s when things got very ugly,” Aditya Vuchi, Founder & CEO, Doosra, observed while giving a demo of his company’s service at MediaNama’s PrivacyNama conference.

Doosra offers a virtual second phone number which can be shared with businesses, dating sites, restaurants, or where one is uncomfortable sharing their personal number. It also comes with a call blocker which is switched on by default thereby ensuring that one is not subjected to pesky marketing calls.

“…it gives you back control of how you think about business communication,” Vuchi said in his address.

The demo was a part of day three of PrivacyNama 2022 which saw companies provide an insight into privacy tech. The day also saw demos by two other companies:

  • Disecto: Manav Mahajan, Co-founder and CEO
  • PrivaSapien: Abilash Soundararajan, Founder & CEO

You can check out these presentations in the link below along with Doosra’s demo.

MediaNama is hosting these discussions with support from Mozilla, Meta, Walmart, Amazon, the Centre for Communication Governance at NLU Delhi, Access Now, the Centre for Internet and Society, and the Advertising Standards Council of India.


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Here are the edited excerpts from Vuchi’s presentation

Where did the idea come from?

I had noticed that the mobile number in India was becoming like a customer identifier in the last 10-15 years. I remember that people were excited when Domino’s customer care recognised the person by name when a call would be made to place an order back in 2007. It almost felt like magic at that point of time. I had walked into a sporting goods store a few years ago, and I was asked for my mobile number at the counter. I come from an ad tech background so I knew how data could potentially be used and misused. I had to provide the number to complete the purchase. I was frustrated because I saw where India was heading where businesses felt that they compel gullible customers into giving out their mobile number. I ended up getting a second SIM card. It is a clunky way of solving the problem as you’re either carrying two SIM cards in a single phone, or worse, carrying two phones.

“The journey did not start as much about privacy, as about the whole idea of our customer experience being so poor, where the customer did not have control on what was happening in a commercial transaction,” Vuchi explained.

Why opt for a subscription-based model?

We were trying to solve the problem of making sure that your data does not get misused. A lot of the internet companies were basically giving you the product for free but they are using your data for monetisation. We were very clear that we didn’t want to go in that direction and for us, the positioning of privacy became that much more important.

Our revenue model is fairly simple. We charge a subscription fee (Rs. 999 per year). It is our way of telling customers that we will build a viable business in this fashion. I don’t need to do anything else with your data. I neither have the intention nor the incentive to indulge in data brokering. It is a fairly common approach in most internet companies that give out their product for free. We recognized that the whole privacy market was a bit small when we started but it is going to scale up significantly in the next decade.

Why not buy a second SIM card instead?

The difference between Doosra versus a regular SIM card is that Doosra blocks all calls by default. With your mobile number, you can only block telemarketers after they have called you. But you can allow certain calls to come through based on rules established by you. You can receive calls by putting them on a whitelist which ensures that calls get forwarded to your primary number.

How do we get the invoice for the purchase if we give the virtual number?

All SMSes to the Doosra number are accessed through the Doosra app. The communication from a business shows up as an SMS along with calls. The idea behind Doosra is it should work everywhere where you’re expected to give a mobile number. These are virtual mobile numbers issued by telcos which makes it impossible for a business to differentiate between them.

Will information of third parties contacting customers be used by Doosra for any form of profiling?

The categorical answer is no. We have built this business on certain principles and we absolutely stand true to them.

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What’s the filtration mechanism for text messages?

We do not have a filter. The only ML we run is to identify OTPs in our system so that we can highlight them. It runs the challenge of a lot of junk SMSes coming through to your Doosra app, and our take on it is like your disposable phone number which collects your junk essentially. You don’t even bother looking at the SMSes that come into your Doosra app except for places where you’re giving it to sign up on a platform. We believe that this is an SMS inbox that should be ignored instead of attracting our focus.

What about delivery agents trying to contact during delivery?

It is an interesting use case. We’ve tied up with some of the popular delivery apps, and when they call you, it comes through a certain landline number. We have asked these companies to provide us with a list of their numbers through which these agents will call, and we will aggregate them and put them as an on/off toggle within the Doosra app.

Are you tying up with delivery companies like Delhivery, etc.?

A lot of these companies, like Delhivery, do not have a cloud telephony system to route all of their calls through a certain set of numbers. It is difficult for us to identify if there’s no masking that is done. We tell people to turn off the call blocker when you’re expecting a delivery. It’s not the most ideal solution but we’re trying to think of ways to do this (recognise calls) without trying to identify the caller or infringe* on privacy.

Is there any linkage to a user’s real identity with the Doosra app? How is KYC done?

There is a linkage to the real identity because we are a licensed virtual network operator and as part of DoT (Department of Telecommunications) regulations, we have to do KYC. We do it through the app. We ask you to upload any of the approved forms of identity, and then we match it against the selfie. There’s a difference between privacy and secrecy. This is not a VPN product that allows you to remain anonymous to everybody. This is a product that is intended to be used in places where you’re uncomfortable sharing your personal number. We will have to retain your real identity.

Will it keep a track of the services used by customers?

No. All of the SMSes and stuff like that get encrypted as soon as they hit our system and they get decrypted only on the device.

Can we change Doosra numbers frequently? Do they get assigned to others?

Recycling is a big problem in the telecom industry. We run a check against popular platforms for a number if its subscription is not renewed. We will deregister those numbers and try to sanitize them as much as possible. We don’t use that number for six months and then we put it up for reuse. We end up in a scenario where you end up not having enough inventory.

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Is Doosra usage recommended for banks, Aadhaar OTP, etc.? How do you ensure security?

I use it for my bank. It is a limitation of Doosra that you cannot use it for UPI because you need to authenticate a number by sending an outgoing SMS which Doosra does not allow.

How do you prevent profiling of a customer on the basis of their Doosra number?

This is a difficult one because even if it was a random 20-digit number, moving across multiple platforms, you can do profiling. The idea behind Doosra is that we give you the power to decide where you want to give your primary number, and where you want to share your alternate digital identity. We will allow multiple numbers in the future so you will be able to use one for dating and one for business. We do not allow it now due to tech limitations, and us being a little conservative in terms of preventing abuse. But we are very comfortable because we do take eKYC so we will start it soon.

Has Doosra applied zero knowledge proof in its design?

I don’t have the best of insights on how zero knowledge proof works but assuming that we have the real identity of the user as part of our entire process, I cannot claim zero knowledge proof.

*Update: The post was edited on October 17. 2022 at 13:10 for clarity. 


This post is released under a CC-BY-SA 4.0 license. Please feel free to republish on your site, with attribution and a link. Adaptation and rewriting, though allowed, should be true to the original.

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Written By

I cover several beats such as Crypto, Telecom, and OTT at MediaNama. I can be found loitering at my local theatre when I am off work consuming movies by the dozen.

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