‘Koo’ co-founders Mayank Bidawatka and Aprameya Radhakrishna on Wednesday decided to shut down the multilingual social media platform after many attempts to get investors were unsuccessful.
“Here’s the final update from our end. Our partnership talks fell through, and we will be discontinuing our service (Koo platform) to the public. We explored partnerships with multiple larger internet companies, conglomerates and media houses but talks didn’t yield the outcome we wanted,” Bidawatka and Radhakrishna said in a joint statement on LinkedIn.
Last time, Koo had reportedly raised about $70 million (Rs 585 crore) in funding and was valued at $270 million (Rs 2,255 crore).
The co-founders stated that in order for the social media platform to become profitable after being founded in 2020, a further five-six years of aggressive, long-term, and patient investments were required.
At its height, Koo had around 10 million monthly active users and over 2.1 million daily active users. It had the accounts of Union Ministries in addition to over 9,000 celebrities.
Previously, Koo had a 10-percent-like ratio, which was around seven to ten times higher than that of Twitter (now X), which made the Indian social networking platform more advantageous for regional content makers.
In 2022, Koo reached a million users in Brazil in less than 48 hours after its launch.
“We were just months away from beating Twitter(now X) in India in 2022 and could have doubled down on that short-term goal with capital behind us. 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,” they said.
“As for us, we are entrepreneurs at heart and you will see us back in the arena one way or another. Till then, thank you for your time, attention, good wishes and love. The little yellow bird says its final goodbye…”, the Koo founders concluded.
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