The Indian microblogging site Koo, which is multilingual and operates in several languages, announced Wednesday that its operations will cease as ongoing talks with partners have not materialized due to a lack of funding.
Koo, a social media platform that is characterized by a yellow bird, was founded in 2020 by serial entrepreneurs Aprameya Radikshna and Mayank Bidadawatka. They wanted to differentiate themselves from Twitter (now X), the world’s largest social network, by allowing users to post in any language they choose, including Hindi, Bangla and Marathi.
Promoted by Indian government officials, the app was launched amid much fanfare to control Twitter.
Koo reached its peak with 60 million downloads, 10 million users and 9,000 VIPs.
The app was promoted by several Indian ministers as an “Aatmanirbhar (Indian-made) app” as it met the goals of Modi’s “Aatmanirbhar, India” campaign.
The campaign was designed to make the country self-reliant by producing world-class products and services, with the larger goal of reducing imports and increasing exports.
Many ministers, including leaders of the Bhartiya Janata Party, announced their support for Koo in 2021 when the Jack Dorsey led Twitter was in a dispute with the Indian Government over its directives to remove over 1,100 posts and accounts that the government claimed were spreading misinformation regarding the farmer protests then taking place in India.
It was interpreted as an indirect insult to the US social media company to follow the rules or risk losing users in its largest market.
Twitter users in India numbered 17.5 millions at the time.
Global ambitions
Koo had initially started by providing Indian users with a place where they could express themselves in their own language, but his vision wasn’t limited to India. He wanted to create a global platform that could be an alternative for Twitter.
It was already the second-largest microblogging website in the world, after Twitter.
In the same year, Koo launched in Brazil, where it offered its platform in 11 native language, including Portuguese.
In 48 hours after its launch, the app was downloaded by 1 million users.
The founders also prepared to enter the US, Bangladesh and Malaysian markets, as well as the Middle East, Africa, Philippines, and the Middle East.
What went wrong?
Bidawatka announced on LinkedIn that they would be ceasing their service to the general public due to failed partnership talks with several larger internet companies, media conglomerates, and conglomerates.
He said that most of them didn’t want to deal the user-generated content or the “wild” nature of a social network company. The founders were forced to make the decision due to the high cost of running a Facebook app.
We built a globally scalable platform in a fraction the time of X/Twitter, with superior systems and algorithms, and stakeholder-first philosophies. Koo had a 10% similarity ratio. This was almost 7-10x greater than Twitter’s ratio. Koo became a better platform for creators. We were only months away from beating Twitter India in 2022, and we could have doubled-down on this short-term goal with capital.
“A long funding winter that hit us when we were at our highest point hurt our plans and at the time, we had to slow down our growth trajectory. Even with all the resources at your disposal, social media is one of most difficult companies to build. You need to get users to a large scale before you can think about revenue. This dream would have taken us 5 to 6 years to realize with patient, long-term and aggressive capital.
Unfortunately for us, we were beaten by the market mood and the winter funding.
Market for vernacular content and news in India is growing
Social media in India has a vibrant and rapid growth, fueled by the increasing penetration of internet, smartphones and a young and tech-savvy population.
By 2024, India is expected to have over 600 million users of social media.
The vernacular segment of news and content, which Koo also catered to, is also growing as consumers prefer local language. India has over 22 official language and dialects.
Ken Research estimates that the Indian vernacular content and news market will grow 76% from FY22 to FY27.
This post X’s Indian challenger ‘Koo’ pulls the plug as funds dry up and partnership talks fail first appeared on The ICD
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