TRAI, DND and consent: the rules for automated calls in India

This is a practical summary for teams running voice agents, not legal advice. Telecom rules change, so check the current TRAI regulations and your telecom provider's requirements, and talk to your counsel for anything specific to your business.

Transactional, service and promotional calls

Indian telecom regulation (TRAI's commercial communication rules) treats calls differently depending on their purpose:

• Transactional and service calls are about something the customer already has with you: an order confirmation, an appointment reminder, a payment due on their account, a delivery update.
• Promotional calls try to sell something new: an offer, a new product, a loan to someone who didn't ask.

Most voice agent use cases (COD confirmation, appointment reminders, payment reminders, following up a lead who asked to be called) are about an existing relationship or request. Promotional calling has stricter rules, including DND preferences and registered headers.

DND and consent

Customers can register on the National Customer Preference Register (DND) to block promotional communication. For promotional calls you need either a number not on DND or the customer's explicit consent. Practical rules:

• Record consent when you collect a phone number (a checkbox, a form, a recorded "yes, call me").
• Store when and how you got it.
• Don't buy or scrape lists of numbers to call.

Calling hours

Call at reasonable hours. For commercial calls, keep to roughly 9 AM to 9 PM in the customer's local time unless they asked to be called at another time; for loan recovery, lenders follow stricter conduct rules on hours and behaviour. In Vaakyo, set calling hours on the agent (and optionally narrower hours per campaign); calls placed outside them wait until the window opens.

Identify yourself, and let people opt out

• Say who is calling and on whose behalf in the first sentence.
• If someone asks not to be called again, stop, and suppress the number in your system.
• Don't let the agent pretend to be a human if asked directly.

Use your own numbers

Call from numbers you hold, never a spoofed or hidden number. Calls from a number registered to your business are also more likely to be answered, and caller-ID verification (such as Truecaller's verified business IDs) helps further.

Keep records

Keep recordings and transcripts for the period your policy requires, and review a sample of calls regularly. If a complaint comes in, you can see exactly what was said.