Koo, ‘India’s answer to Twitter’, shuts shop citing ‘prolonged funding winter that struck at peak’

Koo founders Aprameya Radhakrishna and Mayank Bidawatka wrote in a LinkedIn post that since talks for a strategic partner fell through, they have decided to cease operations.

Logos of Koo and X (formerly Twitter) | Wikimedia Commons

New Delhi: Homegrown microblogging website Koo, touted as India’s answer to California-based Twitter (now X), announced its shutdown Wednesday amid financial woes and limited investors due to the ‘wild nature of a social media company’.

Announcing the decision on LinkedIn Wednesday, the two founders  – Aprameya Radhakrishna and Mayank Bidawatka – wrote in a LinkedIn post that since talks for a strategic partner fell through, they have decided to cease operations.

“We explored partnerships with multiple larger internet companies, conglomerates and media houses but these talks didn’t yield the outcome we wanted. Most of them didn’t want to deal with user generated content and the wild nature of a social media company. A couple of them changed priority almost close to signing,” they wrote on LinkedIn, adding that while they would have liked to keep the app running, the cost of technology services to keep a social media app running is high, which is why they had to make this tough decision.

Koo’s journey started four years ago in 2020. At that time, Koo, along with some more startups, won the Centre’s ‘AatmaNirbhar Bharat App Innovation Challenge’. Similar to Twitter, the app allowed users to post views and videos, follow each other, like their posts, or comment on them. The unique selling point (USP) of the application was that it allowed users to do so in multiple Indian languages as opposed to English-dominated Twitter.

“Koo has been built with a lot of heart. We saw a big gap between the languages the world speaks and the fact that most social products, especially X/Twitter in India are English dominant. In a world where 80% of the population speaks a language other than English, this is a strong need. We wanted to democratize expression and enable a better way to connect people in their local languages. Most global products are dominated by Americans. We believe that India should have a place on the table,” the two founders wrote.

‘We were just months away from beating Twitter’, say founders

In the beginning, the platform saw phenomenal growth in its user base, crossing the one crore mark in about a year’s time. In 2021, the company had 200 employees and was looking to increase its headcount to 500 employees within a year. 

“We were just months away from beating Twitter in India in 2022 and could have doubled down on that short term goal with capital behind us. A prolonged funding winter which hit us at our peak hurt our plans at the time and we had to tone down on our growth trajectory,” the founders wrote.

“Social media is probably one of the toughest companies to build even with all resources available as you need to grow users to a significant scale before one thinks of revenue. We needed 5 to 6 years of aggressive, long term and patient capital to make this dream a reality,” they added.

Apart from allowing users to express themselves in Indian languages, the social media platform significantly benefited from the ‘nationalism’ narrative in the country, which gained fervor especially after the Centre, in 2020, banned at least a 100 Chinese applications citing threat to national security and sovereignty amid tensions on the border between India and China. 

“Koo’s popularity first surged in response to the clashes between India and China at Galwan Valley in summer 2020. This was the first time that a technology platform in India seemed to be responding and extracting value through geopolitical tensions with an adversary,” Kabir Taneja, a Fellow with Strategic Studies programme at Observer Research Foundation, a New Delhi-based global think tank, wrote in an article published in April 2021.

The year 2021 also saw a fight between Twitter and the Indian government over the implementation of new IT guidelines. While Twitter had expressed concerns over “intimidation tactics” by Delhi Police and “potential threat to freedom of expression” in India, the government hit back, calling the statement baseless, false and an attempt to defame India to hide their own follies. Twitter and the Centre also locked horns over the removal of content related to 2020-2021 Indian farmers’ protests.

While Twitter moved the Karnataka High Court, seeking review and relief from content blocking orders from the government, Koo sought to use compliance as one of the tools to usurp Twitter’s lead in India. 

In an interview to ThePrint in 2022, Radhakrishna said that Koo complies with all such takedown orders. He also said that when Koo receives an official takedown request from the government, it not only complies with the request but also informs its user of “the exact reason why the content has been taken down”, and the user can then follow up with the appropriate authority.

‘Funding winter got the better of us’, say founders

Amid this tussle with Twitter, Koo received a lot of support in the form of endorsements by Union ministers and government departments as a ‘Made-in-India alternative to Twitter’. 

Many government officials announced on Twitter their plans to join Koo, inviting others to connect on the “Indian micro-blogging platform for real-time, exciting and exclusive updates. Let us exchange our thoughts and ideas on Koo.”

This, however, also gave the company tags of being pro-government and a right-wing echo chamber among others, even as the founders and investors tried to clarify and termed it a perception issue. The company was never fully able to get rid of these labels.

“We built a globally scalable product in a fraction of the time that X/Twitter did, with superior systems, algorithms and strong stakeholder-first philosophies. Koo used to have a 10% like ratio, almost 7-10x the ratio Twitter had – making Koo a more favorable platform for creators. At our peak we were at about 2.1 million daily active users and ~ 10 million monthly active users, 9000+ VIPs, that included some of the most eminent personalities from various fields,” Radhakrishna and Bidawatka said in the LinkedIn post.

According to data from Tracxn.com, Koo had so far raised about USD 67 million, and the firm was valued at USD 274 million as on November 22, 2022. It had 67 employees as of January this year. Its list of investors include Tiger Global Management, Accel, 3one4 Capital and Casper, among others. The company also let go of about 30 percent of its workforce over the course of the year in 2023, media reports said.

“Unfortunately for us, the mood of the market and the funding winter got the better of us. Timing the market is an underestimated variable. It can define and discount everything at times. Koo could have easily scaled internationally and given India a global brand that was truly made in India. This dream will remain,” the founders said in the LinkedIn post.

To deal with the ‘funding winter’, the company was hunting for strategic partners. In a post on LinkedIn about 2 months back, Bidawatka said talks were ongoing but delayed, and to extend the runway, the company had to resort to salary cuts. 

“What we’ve built is truly magnificent. We will be happy to share some of these assets with someone with a great vision for India’s foray into social media. We will also evaluate making this into a digital public good to enable social conversations in native languages, around the world. This is very difficult and complicated tech and we’ve built it painstakingly in record time,” the founders said.

They added that patience and long-term capital is essential to build “ambitious, world beating products” from India in any field and it will need a lot more capital when the space has a global giant already. 

“And when one of these companies takes off, it can’t be left to the whims of the capital market, which goes up and down. It needs a strategic outlook to safeguard it and make it thrive. These aren’t to be looked at as profit churning machines in 2 years from launch. They need to be nurtured for a larger long term play. We would love to see that long term view for large bets from India,” they wrote.

(Edited by Radifah Kabir)