The Indian social media site Koo, which sought to compete with Twitter, is closing. The decision was made public by the founders, Aprameya Radhakrishna and Mayank Bidawatka, who cited high technology costs and unsuccessful partnership negotiations. In April 2023, the company began to lay off a sizable portion of its workforce.
Aprameya Radhakrishna, the Co Founder and CEO at Koo, said in his LinkedIn post, "Here's an update from Mayank Bidawatka and me. Thanks for all the love and support for Koo over the years."
Koo's reach and expansion
At its height, Koo boasted over 9,000 VIP members and 2.1 million daily active users, out of a total of 10 million monthly users. They had to scale back despite their success due to financial difficulties and a protracted funding freeze.
The founders identified two key problems: the unpredictability of the capital market and the high cost of technology.
Additionally, the company's founders announced their plan to sell off a portion of its assets. "We will be happy to share some of these assets with someone with a great vision for India's foray into social media," the founders wrote in a note.
Twitter's rival in India
From the start, the platform was directly compared to Twitter, and once Elon Musk took over the microblogging site, it began to gain popularity. "With superior systems, algorithms, and strong stakeholder-first philosophies, we built a globally scalable product in a fraction of the time that X/Twitter did," the note stated.
Thanking their investors and users
They thanked their supporters, team, investors, creators, and users in their parting message. Regarding upcoming endeavors, they are still upbeat. The founders still hope to see an inclusive platform in the future, despite the platform's closure.
Our team remained by our side the entire time, through good times and bad. We consider ourselves extremely fortunate to have collaborated with such a driven group of people who shared our vision for the business."
The founders made hints about returning to the business world. 'We consider ourselves to be entrepreneurs at heart', and 'one way or another, you can count on us to return to the arena.'
