Hyderabad: Privacy today is a luxury, given how invasive mobile apps and telemarketers are, as they collect our personal data. As a result, many find themselves at the receiving end of unwanted calls or messages. And more often than not, this is a result of citizens having no option but to share their numbers here and there, or to organisations for information purposes.
Enter Doosra, a privacy protection app that is perhaps a solution to the telemarketing nightmare that we face. Creating by Hyderabad-based entrepreneur Aditya Vuchi, the app basically provides users a number as an alternative one that they can give in the public. So what’s the difference? Unlike a regular number, here, all calls are blocked by default, so the user does not receive any unsolicited messages or calls.
“While using this app, a user can choose to unblock or receive calls from the numbers they want. Many of us give our numbers to shopkeepers or stores, for various purposes. That is when you get spam calls. In this case, with a second number via Doosra, users can choose to avoid calls they don’t want,” Aditya told Siasat.com. He added that given its response, they have also introduced Doosra Pro, which allows users to use Whatsapp as a feature.
“Many of our customers are people who are small business owners, who also wanted to use our Doosra numbers to share it with local businesses,” Aditya said. He added that Doosra was launched in September 2020 as a startup in the consumer digital privacy space.
Given that we live in a world today where we are forced to give our personal mobile number for everything and
everywhere, Aditya and his team created a privacy-focused solution to tackle this irritating problem.
Doosra is essentially a virtual mobile number that you can share with anyone, while protecting your personal number
and identity as well.
The company claims that it received high accolades from its early users for its ingenuity and relevance in today’s age of digital payments and transactions to ensure personal data privacy protection. Aditya however declined to provide numbers with regard to their user base, but said that it is promising.
Aside from Doosra, Aditya, who is an alumnus of the Hyderabad Public School, moved back to Hyderabad from the US and co-founded MediaMint along with his partner, Neelima Marupuru. MediaMint is now a successful, 700+ people marketing operations company that works with some of the largest ad agencies and publishers globally to manage and optimize digital media campaigns.
While working on MediaMint, Aditya, who had the passion of solving India-specific problems that affect the citizens at-large, came up with the idea to start Doosra. Given all the issues we see regarding privacy, especially as to how big tech giants use our date for ads, Doosra can perhaps be an alternative. It can also be an option for women who could avoid sharing their personal mobile numbers for safety reasons.