Homegrown Twitter-copy Koo to shut down after failed acquisition talks

Homegrown social media app and microblogging site Koo, once touted as a strong competitor to X (formerly Twitter), is shutting down its operations, following series of unsuccessful attempts to sell or merge the platform.

Its Co-founder Aprameya Radhakrishna, took it to LinkedIn post to make the announcement.

The post, attributed to both the Co-founders Radhakrishna and Mayank Bidawatka, read, "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 post noted that the team built a globally scalable product in a fraction of the time that X/Twitter did, with superior systems, algorithms, and strong stakeholder-first philosophies and was just months away from beating Twitter in India in 2022 and could have doubled down on that short term goal with capital behind it.

However, "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 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" they said.

Koo will now evaluate making its assets into a digital public good. "We will be happy to share some of these assets with someone with a great vision for India's foray into social media," it was highlighted.

The beginning

Koo began its operation in March 2020 and quickly gained prominence amidst the standoff between the Indian government and Twitter in 2021 over the former's takedown requests related to farmer protests. Famous celebrities and politicians were quick to join the platform. The platform claimed to have over 9,000 VIPs, including some of the most eminent personalities across various fields.

However, Koo started to face challenges back in September 2022 when it first fired around 40 employees and then in April 2023, cut short 30 percent of its workforce. In the same month, its monthly active users (MAUs) dropped to about 3.1 million, which in January 2023 stood around 4.1 million.

In recent months, Koo had engaged with start-ups like Dailyhunt and Sharechat for a potential buyout, as per Moneycontrol, but those talks did not fructify over time.