New Delhi. The domestic platform ‘Koo’, which was presented as the Indian answer to social media giant Twitter (now X), is being forced to shut down its operations due to funding challenges. Announcing the closure of operations on Wednesday, the co-founders of Koo said that this situation has arisen due to failed attempts of partnership and problems in raising funds.
With this announcement, the curtain fell on Koo’s business. Its popularity in India increased rapidly around 2021 during the disputes of the Indian government with Twitter. At that time, many Union Ministers, politicians and government departments also opened their accounts on Koo.
During its rapid growth days, Koo had around 21 lakh daily active users and about one crore monthly active users. At that time, it was backed by major investors like Tiger Global, Accel, 3One4 Capital and Kalaari Capital. However, problems in raising funds for a long time and failed talks about acquisition adversely affected Koo’s operations. It continued to struggle with a declining user base and also laid off employees last year.
Co-founders Aprameya Radhakrishna and Mayank Bidawatka said in a post on professional networking platform LinkedIn that Koo will shut down its services to the public and its ‘little yellow bird’ is bidding a final farewell. The yellow bird is the logo of Koo.
Both co-founders wrote, “We explored the possibility of partnership with several large internet companies, groups and media houses, but these talks did not yield the desired result.” The co-founders said that they wanted to keep this app going but the cost of technology services required for this is high, so it was very difficult to decide about it.
He said that Koo was created ‘with a lot of heart’ to ‘democratise expression’ and connect people better in their local languages. The platform supported many Indian languages like Hindi, Telugu, Tamil, Bengali, Gujarati, Marathi, Assamese and Punjabi in its heyday.
The co-founders said that Koo was looking close to overtaking Twitter in India in the year 2022, but this ambitious campaign had to be stopped due to lack of capital. He said, “Most of the global products are dominated by Americans. We believe that India should also get a place in this field.” Both the founders of Koo said, “What we have built is really great. We would be happy to share some of these assets with someone who has a better vision for India’s entry into social media.”