Koo, India’s Twitter-like social media app, is shutting down: Here’s why

In a recent LinkedIn post, company co-founder Mayank Bidawatka said they were exploring partnerships with “many larger internet companies, conglomerates, and media houses, but those talks didn’t yield any results” and that “several of them changed their priorities right before the deal was signed.”

The update came after the report Morning Context suggested that the deal between Koo and DailyHunt had fallen through. While the app expanded its presence in Brazil and recorded over a million downloads in just 48 hours of launch, it struggled to gain traction in the Indian market.

The interface is similar to Twitter’s, and the app allows users to categorize posts using hashtags and tag other users in mentions or replies. The social network has often added new features like “Talk to Type” and even supported various Indian languages like Hindi, Telugu, Tamil, Bengali, Gujarati, Marathi, Assamese, and Punjabi, to name a few.

Several prominent Indian politicians such as Piyush Goyal, Ravi Shankar Prasad, author Amish Tripathi, cricketer Anil Kumble and Javagal Srinath were among the first to sign up for Koo. It also managed to attract the attention of popular Brazilian celebrities such as Babu Santana, Claudia Leitte and author Rosana Hermann.

In 2022, the Department of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises and Export Promotion, Government of Uttar Pradesh signed an MoU with Koo to promote the ‘One District, One Product’ initiative. The social media company has also collaborated with the Government of India on several projects.

Koo raised $60 million in funding from high-profile investors like Tiger Global and Accel after winning the Atmanirbhar App Innovation Challenge, a part of the Indian government’s Make in India initiative.

In April last year, the company laid off about 30 percent (about 300 employees) due to mounting losses, falling active users and weak global sentiment.

First message: Jul 03, 2024 at 15:19 IST