- By Aditya Pratap Singh
- Wed, 03 Jul 2024 04:14 PM (IST)
- Source:JND
Koo, India's indigenous microblogging platform, Which was once highlighted as a strong competitor to X (formerly known as Twitter), is now shutting down its operations. Aprameya Radhakrishna, co-founder of Koo, in a LinkedIn post, announced that they are closing the operation to the ambitious venture that aimed to build a space in the global social media landscape.
Why is Koo closing operations?
The decision to stop the operations was followed by a series of unsuccessful attempts to sell or merge the social media platform. The discussions with content aggregator DailyHunt were the prominent ones. Following the setback in negotiations, Koo was left with no option but to close the operation.
Radhakrishna In a joint post with co-founder Mayank Bidawatka, explained the reason behind the closure.
"Here's the final update from our end. Our partnership talks fell through and we will be discontinuing our service to the public. We explored partnerships with multiple larger internet companies, conglomerates, and media houses but these talks didn't yield the outcome we wanted. Most of them didn't want to deal with user-generated content and the wild nature of a social media company. A couple of them changed priority almost close to signing. While we would've liked to keep the app running, the cost of technology services to keep a social media app running is high and we've had to take this tough decision," The co-founder said in the LinkedIn post."
He said that Koo was built to fill the gap between vernacular languages which were dominated by the English language. The statement stated that 80 percent of the World's population speaks a language other than English.
Also read: Vraj Iron and Steel IPO listing: Shares List Over 15% Premium On BSE, NSE
"Koo has been built with a lot of heart. We saw a big gap between the languages the world speaks and the fact that most social products, especially X/Twitter in India are English-dominant. In a world where 80% of the population speaks a language other than English, this is a strong need. We wanted to democratize expression and enable a better way fo connect people in their local languages. Most global products are dominated by Americans. We believe that India should have a place at the table."
Aprameya Radhakrishna highlighted the popularity of Koo during its peak time. He also mentioned that the Indian platform was on the verge of beating global social media giant Twitter in 2022.
"At our peak, we were at about 2.1 million daily active users and ~10 million monthly active users, 9000+ VIPs, that included some of the most eminent personalities from various fields. We were just months away from beating Twitter in India in 2022 and could have doubled down on that short-term goal with capital behind us," the statement reads.
In his linked post, he mentioned, how a prolonged funding winter hit the company when the koo was at its peak.
"A prolonged funding winter which hit us at our peak hurt our plans at the time and we had to tone down on our growth trajectory. Social media is probably one of the toughest companies to build even with all the resources available as you need to grow users to a significant scale before one thinks of revenue. We needed 5 to 6 years of aggressive, long term and patient capital to make this dream a reality," Aprameya Radhakrishna said.
"Unfortunately for us, the mood of the market and the funding winter got the better of us. Timing the market is an underestimated variable. It can define and discount everything at times. Koo could have easily scaled internationally and given India a global brand that was truly made in India. This dream will remain," he added further.
He thanked all supporters and team members who have worked relentlessly for thousands of hours.
"We're grateful to all those who've supported us along our journey. Our team, worked thousands of man-hours to bring to life this beautiful product and company, our investors backed us, millions of creators and users poured their hearts out on the platform and spent millions of hours consuming content and our journalist friends covered our updates with the public at large," the statement said.