The ‘Made in India’ equivalent to microblogging platform X (formerly known as Twitter) ‘Koo’ has shut down operations. The multilingual platform was scouting for buyers for a lifeline but did not find any M&A possibilities with media conglomerates, big internet companies, and big businesses.

The decision was announced by Co-founder Aprameya Radhakrishna in a LinkedIn post where he blamed the ‘prolonged funding winter’ and ‘mood of the market’ despite giving it all.

“While we would’ve liked to keep the app running, the cost of technology services to keep a social media app running is high, and we’ve had to take this tough decision,” Radhakrishna wrote in the post.

According to start-up information database Tracxn, Koo had 67 employees in January 2024, a 69.7 per cent dip in headcount since January 2023.

Lack of capital

In their note, the founders stressed on the lack of ‘patient long-term capital’ to build ‘world-beating Indian products’ across domains. 

Koo’s struggle highlights the troubles local social media platforms face when trying to challenge global rivals. ShareChat, another domestic social media app, has seen a significant scale-down in operations and has undertaken severe restructuring, including large-scale layoffs.

Founded in 2019 by Aprameya Radhakrishna and Mayank Bidawatka, Koo was launched in March 2020. It gained prominence amidst the standoff between the Indian government and Twitter (now X) in 2021 over the former’s takedown requests related to farmer protests.

In 2020, it witnessed a meteoric rise in popularity, with at least 28 million installs. At one time, it boasted 2.1 million daily active users, along with 10 million monthly active users and a significant roster of over 9,000 VIPs but faced a setback in its growth plans. “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,” the co-founders lamented.

Koo was last valued at $274 million after securing over $66 million from investors. As per the Founders’ post, Koo will now evaluate making its assets into a digital public good to enable social conversations in native languages around the world.

Financial constraints

The company halted all customer acquisition campaigns from June 2022, leading to a decline in active users. In April, the company halted salary payments to all its employees, citing financial constraints.

Koo could not make big inroads in terms of engagement, noted Harish Bijoor, business & brand-strategy expert.

“These models need to have financial sustainability built into their DNA. Koo did not have subscription revenue, or ticket-based revenue, but was reliant on advertising or corporate, B2B deals, etc. While Koo received a lot of encomiums from the political class which was very against Twitter, it mostly received only lip sympathy because people spoke, but they did not speak with their wallets. Though Koo had a lot of jingoism supporting it, it did not have monetary backing. At the end of day, money is important, and Koo realised that,” said Bijoor.

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