Recently, Koo, the microblogging platform, announced they were shutting down, which honestly wasn’t such a big deal because shutdowns and closures are part of an entrepreneur’s journey. What surprised me was the plethora of comments that followed.
Koo shutdown because they never got the product market fit right, which is non-negotiable for success. Any new product or service must critically compare itself against established competitors and see if it is better, faster or cheaper and make sure at least two of these parameters are ticked. As a user for few weeks I can tell you that Koo did not measure up on any of these three parameters. Hence it failed. Maybe the platform could have focused on specific categories such as only India-centric content or Indian movies or cricket and got more traction. They did try the Indian language-focused approach but, clearly, it did not move the needle enough. The team erred badly in their strategy of merely beating Twitter and became obsessed with this goal; so much so that even their logo and mascot were very similar. Consumers use a service only if they see strong comparative differentiators in the offering and not because they want to join a movement to bring down a established brand. It’s not the consumer’s job to win a business battle.
But frankly, it does not matter. Failure is fine. The founders had a vision, they tried executing it and it didn’t work. All good. I am sure they will move on to their next adventure soon. I am also sure the marquee investors would write off their significant investments, learn from the episode and move on. That’s how it works and it should.
However, the Koo shutdown did not go down quiet. It attracted a lot of nastiness from trolls because of their political dispensation. Somewhere in their journey, Koo got caught up in the Atmanirbhar narrative and positioned the brand as India’s answer to Twitter, riding on a temporary show-of-strength between the Indian government and Twitter. It’s important for India to be self-sufficient in most areas but there’s no critical need for us to have our own national equivalents to Google, Facebook, Apple, Twitter, LinkedIn etc. Just to clarify, Ola and Flipkart are strong home-grown alternatives to Uber and Amazon because of the high amount of local, on-ground physical components such as cars, drivers, last mile deliveries — which are key moving parts of the businesses.
Indian consumers are quite demanding, as they should be, and if they can access world class services from their phones, they will. But the sarcasm from folks from “the other side” and their happiness in Koo’s closure is disappointing. This inability to understand and respect entrepreneurial failures as stepping stones in achieving success is a key reason why India will never come close to the Silicon Valley start-up ecosystem. To them I say: It’s just not Kool.
(The writer is a serial entrepreneur and best-selling author of the book “Failing to Succeed” He tweets @vaitheek)