The Delhi Commission for Women’s (DCW) Helpline – ‘181’ has started receiving double number of calls through installation of the 181 Women’s Helpline Quick Dial Feature in the Truecaller App.

While earlier, the helpline received 2000 calls every day, the number has doubled to 4000 calls per day.

On 7 March, Truecaller App had started displaying the women’s safety helpline number -181 – on its dialler, as part of its campaign on crimes against women and girls – #ItsNotOk.

As soon as the Women’s Helpline 181 number started being displayed at the Homepage of the Truecaller App as a quick dialler button, the DCW which runs 181 Women Helpline saw a huge spike in the calls received by the Commission on the Helpline in Delhi.

“Now the women commission’s helpline is receiving more than 4,000 calls per day, that is double of total calls received per day previously. In February, before the integration of 181 on the Truecaller dialler, the DCW Women Helpline received 35,296 calls. In March, after the integration, a total of 68,576 calls were received,” said DCW spokesperson.

However, a significant portion of the calls were simply to check whether the 181 Women Helpline exists and understand the help it can provide to women and girls.

The women and girls of Delhi seek help from the 181 women helpline in cases related to domestic violence, sexual assault and other crimes against women.

Pragya Misra, Director of Public Affairs, Truecaller, said, “Today, over 10 crore women in India use Truecaller as their first line of defence against calls and SMS based harassment. Pinning the emergency helpline number on the Truecaller dialler for a one-click access to 181 women’s helpline number in times of emergency is a step to keep our users safe.”

She further said, “About 2.45 million of our 220 million users in India used this feature and about 4.21 million calls were initiated over 45 days from within Truecaller. This is our attempt to empower women by creating awareness on the actions that they can take to combat and call out harassment.”

Swati Maliwal, DCW Chairperson endorsed this effort by saying, “I laud this brilliant initiative by the Truecaller App. The present initiative of the Truecaller App has doubled the calls received on the Commission’s helpline, thereby significantly increasing the reach of the Commission. The Commission has set up robust systems to handle the increase in calls and is further strengthening the same with the help of the Delhi Government.”