Back in March, Truecaller released Guardians, an app that allows anyone to share their location with their guardians to keep a track of them. Five months after its launch, the app has reached a new milestone and gained new features.
This article contains input from Nakul Kabra, Product Manager for Guardians
Going forward, the company will be adding multiple new features to make the app more useful for more users. We spoke with Nakul Kabra, Product Manager for Guardians who gave us an insight and took us through the journey of Guardians, downloads, usage patterns and upcoming features.
What is the Guardians app?
Guardians was developed by Truecaller, which is popularly known for its caller ID functionality. It is a safety app built for anyone who wants to share their location with their trusted one in order to be safe all the time. It can be a tool for women's safety and comes in handy for your loved ones too, be it your parents, grandparents, spouses, or children.
Over one million downloads in 5 months
The Guardians app has received a good response from around the globe with installs on Android reaching over one million in the first week of August. The overall number is over 1.1 million including both the Google Play Store and App Store. The company also tells us the first 500K downloads took three months while the next 500K took just two months, as lockdowns started easing.
There are about 300K active users on the app
Among the million downloads, India takes a big share with 60% of downloads while rest of the world takes 40% 一 Nakul also told us the app is also popular in Gulf and African nations.
On Google Play Store, the Guardians app has received 4.5 stars and is also amongst the top 10 apps in the Maps and Navigation category.
Features added after the initial launch
After the initial launch in March and gathering a bunch of feedback from users, the Guardians app has received many features. The first and most prominent feature is adding support for multiple languages. The app now supports Arabic, French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Indonesian languages.
Another feature request that was reviewed by users from countries where Google Maps isn’t popular is satellite view, which is now present on the current version of the app. Further, the app also gained features like pin mode to track, directions to navigate and saved places.
Upcoming features on Guardians app
Talking about the future, Nakul also shared a couple of interesting features that will be available in the coming months.
Firstly the app will get Location-based alerts wherein the app can send guardians notifications when you start from a location to the point where you reach the destination. For example, this will come in handy when you leave from home and the app automatically shares a location with your Guardians until you reach your workplace.
The second feature is based on your activity, using Android’s Activity Recognition API, the Guardians app will be able to trigger and send notifications when you start a walk or start driving. The company also says that you will be able to trigger the sharing based on the speed like 一 when you walk/run over 20km/hr or drive over 50km/hr. Further, the company will also add Hindi language support for Indian users.
Apart from these three features, the company is also working on features like Geo-location based sharing, multiple login via different phones, and as always, the company is trying to optimize battery consumption and keep the app bug-free.
Lastly, Nakul also told us the company is ready to collaborate with local government authorities in order to make everyone and their loved ones safe. He also added that the app will be free forever to install and there won't be a premium tier option ever.
