Koo, the Indian version of X, to shut down as ‘partnership talks’ fail

Koo, the Indian alternative to X (formerly Twitter), is shutting down, founders Aprameya Radhakrishna and Mayank Bidawatka announced in a LinkedIn post on Wednesday (July 3).

They explained that a “prolonged funding winter” hit the company at its peak, hurting their plans and slowing down its stupendous growth trajectory.

So near, yet so far

According to the post, the platform at its peak had 2.1 million daily active users, about 10 million monthly active users, and over 9,000 VIPs, and it was “just months away from beating Twitter in India in 2022”. “We…could have doubled down on that short term goal with capital behind us,” said the statement.

But then came the funding crunch, said the founders. “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,” they wrote. “We needed 5 to 6 years of aggressive, long term and patient capital to make this dream a reality,” they explained.

Failed partnership talks

Koo, launched in 2020, was designed so that Indians could communicate in their native languages in a largely English-dominated social media environment. The platform with a yellow bird logo was available in more than 10 languages. However, it faced criticism from certain quarters for its apparent right-wing leanings, especially with the ruling party BJP.

The company had also been in talks with Bengaluru-based news content aggregator Dailyhunt for acquisition, it had been reported in February this year. However, those talks reportedly failed. The founders had reportedly also tried to negotiate a potential sale or merger with other companies but nothing worked out. The founders said in their statement that the decision was taken after “partnership talks fell through”.