Our Bureau Koo, India’s own microblogging app, has raised $4.1 million in Series A funding. Infosys veteran Mohandas Pai’s 3one4 Capital is the latest addition to the investors on board. Accel Partners, Kalaari Capital, Blume Ventures and Dream Incubator also participated in the round.
Koo is a microblogging site for opinions voiced in Indian languages.
The new funding will be used to ramp up capabilities to solve uniquely Indian engineering challenges and for marketing to increase awareness about the app, said a company release.
Aprameya Radhakrishna, co-founder and CEO, Koo, said: “Existing microblogging platforms have not been able to grow beyond the English-speaking population. Koo enables free expression of thoughts and opinions for every Indian irrespective of the language preference. Koo will amplify the daily voices of India on an Indian platform.”
The 10-month-old app has won the Centre’s Atmanirbhar App Challenge. It was also named Google PlayStore’s Best Daily Essential App for 2020 and got a special mention by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his Mann Ki Baat address.
“Koo is a very valuable and powerful platform in the Indian context. Social platforms focussed on India need to be highly contextualised to the audience here beyond languages and must include community, moderation and content relevance. Both Aprameya and Mayank (Mayank Bidawatka, co-founder of Koo) are proven entrepreneurs and have built large internet businesses before. We are happy to partner with them to make this Atmanirbhar vision become a reality and to build sustainable and socially relevant platforms” said Anurag Ramdasan, Principal, 3one4 Capital.