Koo, the home-grown Twitter me-too app for vernacular expression, has garnered over 5.2 million users, one year after it went live in March 2020.

The app is looking to grow its user count by 15 times this year, introduce new features, ramp up availability in 25 Indian languages (from eight now) and beef up personalisation efforts, a top executive told BusinessLine .

Celebrity splash

Koo has attracted many prominent faces in India to the platform, including Bollywood and sports personalities, several Union Ministers and Chief Ministers. Many celebrities have also been attracting followers at a much faster pace than they did on Twitter.

For instance, veteran actor Anupam Kher has over half a million followers in 40 days. Actor Kangana Ranaut attracted 4 lakh followers within 40 days, and will exceed her Twitter followership of 3 million in less than a year at this rate. It took her 6 years to achieve 3 million followers on Twitter.

Union Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad will soon cross 1 million followers. Union Minister Piyush Goyal is about to cross half a million followers in less than 2 months. Union Minister Smriti Irani, who joined Koo on February 12, has already garnered 2.43 lakh followers. Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, Yogi Adityanath, who joined on February 9, already has 1.55 lakh followers. Mary Kom (boxer), Sania Nehwal (badminton star), Hima Das (sprinter), Harleen Kaur Deol (cricketer), Rani Rampal (India’s hockey team captain) are some sports personalities who are active on the platform.

“Many celebrities and prominent personalities have got anywhere between 2-100 times the number of followers on Koo in a very short span of time. They are seen Kooing in multiple Indian languages catering to unique audiences that aren’t seen on Twitter.

“A very small percentage of Koo users have Twitter accounts. This stands true to the proposition that Koo has been building around the power of vernacular languages in India’s Internet,” Mayank Bidawatka, co-founder Koo, told BusinessLine .

Wooing followers

Many celebrities have also been attracting followers at a much faster pace than they did on Twitter. For instance, Archana Puran Singh got 90,000+ followers on Koo within 29 days compared to over 64,000 followers on Twitter over 10 years. Swaroop Sampat Rawal crossed her 5+ years Twitter followership of 43,000 in 40 days and has 59,000+ followers on Koo.”

Discuss local issues

Asked how users express themselves differently on Koo compared to Twitter, Mayank said “Discussions on Twitter are on national and global topics but the Kannadiga from Bengaluru or Mysuru is not necessarily discussing those issues, they would rather discuss local issues with fellow Kannadigas. Koo is a made-for-India app. It is very easy to discover people, content and discuss local issues on Koo, especially for celebrities to connect with local people and communities.”

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