Koo, India’s Twitter-rival platform, will cease operations due to a “prolonged funding winter”, announced its founders Aprameya Radhakrishna and Mayank Bidawatka. Rather than continuing, however, due to inadequate funding and support sources, koo will shut down due to funding shortfall. Koo, an Indian social media platform intended as an alternative to Twitter, will shut down after experiencing “an extended funding winter”, according to founders Aprameya Radhakrishna and Mayank Bidawatka in a LinkedIn post.
Koo aimed to be an alternative to Twitter that allowed Indians to communicate in their native tongue in an English-dominated social media landscape, yet was widely seen as closely aligned with India’s ruling BJP and its followers at a time when Twitter was being criticised by the government over its compliance policies.
TechCrunch reported that Koo’s proposed sale deal with digital media company Dailyhunt did not materialize, although its founders claimed at its height, that there were over 2 million daily active users, 10 million monthly active users and over 9,000 VIPs using its platform. “We were only months away from becoming India’s number-one social network in 2022 with adequate capital behind us and could have doubled down on this short-term goal with capital in hand,” stated the founders in their statement.
They went on to explain that the prolonged funding winter that hit them at their height caused serious delays and caused them to alter their growth trajectory accordingly. Koo announced she raised $30 million through an investor round led by Tiger Global and comprised of Accel Partners, Kalaari Capital, Blume Ventures and Dream Incubator as reported by Koo. “We have ambitious plans to become one of the world’s largest social media platforms in a few years, with every Indian pulling for us,” stated Radhakrishna at that time.
