The choice was introduced by Co-founder Aprameya Radhakrishna in a LinkedIn publish the place he blamed the ‘extended funding winter’ and ‘temper of the market’ regardless of giving all of it.
“Whereas we might’ve preferred to maintain the app working, the price of know-how providers to maintain a social media app working is excessive, and we’ve needed to take this powerful resolution,” Radhakrishna wrote within the publish.
In response to start-up info database Tracxn, Koo had 67 workers in January 2024, a 69.7 per cent dip in headcount since January 2023.
Lack of capital
Of their observe, the founders harassed on the dearth of ‘affected person long-term capital’ to construct ‘world-beating Indian merchandise’ throughout domains.
Koo’s wrestle highlights the troubles native social media platforms face when attempting to problem international rivals. ShareChat, one other home social media app, has seen a major scale-down in operations and has undertaken extreme restructuring, together with large-scale layoffs.
Based in 2019 by Aprameya Radhakrishna and Mayank Bidawatka, Koo was launched in March 2020. It gained prominence amidst the standoff between the Indian authorities and Twitter (now X) in 2021 over the previous’s takedown requests associated to farmer protests.
In 2020, it witnessed a meteoric rise in reputation, with at the very least 28 million installs. At one time, it boasted 2.1 million every day energetic customers, together with 10 million month-to-month energetic customers and a major roster of over 9,000 VIPs however confronted a setback in its development plans. “We had been simply months away from beating Twitter in India in 2022 and will have doubled down on that short-term objective with capital behind us,” the co-founders lamented.
Koo was final valued at $274 million after securing over $66 million from buyers. As per the Founders’ publish, Koo will now consider making its belongings right into a digital public good to allow social conversations in native languages all over the world.
Monetary constraints
The corporate halted all buyer acquisition campaigns from June 2022, resulting in a decline in energetic customers. In April, the corporate halted wage funds to all its workers, citing monetary constraints.
Koo couldn’t make large inroads by way of engagement, famous Harish Bijoor, enterprise & brand-strategy professional.
“These fashions have to have monetary sustainability constructed into their DNA. Koo didn’t have subscription income, or ticket-based income, however was reliant on promoting or company, B2B offers, and so forth. Whereas Koo obtained numerous encomiums from the political class which was very in opposition to Twitter, it largely obtained solely lip sympathy as a result of individuals spoke, however they didn’t converse with their wallets. Although Koo had numerous jingoism supporting it, it didn’t have financial backing. On the finish of day, cash is essential, and Koo realised that,” stated Bijoor.
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