True, it started 7-8 months back. The indian system is completely depended on phone numbers, every service requires a phone number (rather than email ID) even government services; which made your phone number visible to every single company on this planet.

I have two numbers, one without whatsapp. While giving my number to companies, I give them my non-whatsapp number so that they cannot spam by whatsapp inbox with nonsense.

Here, we do not have phone number forwarding services like MySudo to cloak your real number which these companies take advantage of.