Twitter competitor Koo to shut down due to financial problems

Social media app Koo is being shut down. This Indian startup was started about four years ago to compete with micro blogging platform Twitter (now called X). It will be shut down after acquisition talks with big internet and media companies failed.

Koo was started by Aprameya Radhakrishna and Mayank Bidawatka. It provided services to users in the languages ​​of the country. Aprameya and Bidawatka said in a post on LinkedIn on Wednesday that after the acquisition talks with some big internet companies, business groups and media companies failed, Koo will be shut down. In February, a TechCrunch report claimed that Koo was in talks with Bengaluru-based news and content aggregator Dailyhunt to acquire it.

Its founders have said that some companies had changed their priorities when Koo’s acquisition deal was in the final stages and most of these companies did not want to deal with user generated content. The app had about one crore monthly active users and about 21 lakh daily active users at its peak. Koo’s popularity grew rapidly when there was tension between the central government and Twitter over requests to remove content. About two years ago, Koo crossed the mark of five crore users. Within a year, it had crossed the mark of five crore users. Twitter Twitter had set a target to surpass its user base of 2018. The number of Twitter users has grown rapidly in the past few years.

A major problem for this startup was the lack of funding. Aprameya said that Koo needed long-term funding to increase the number of users before earning revenue. He said that the high cost of running this social media app is a major reason behind the decision to shut down Koo. Koo made its algorithm public about two years ago. Its founders say that they are considering continuing this service to enable social media in indigenous languages.