It was launched in 2020 and in these four years of its journey, Koo confronted a lot of struggles. (Image: X @Koo India)
Koo, the Indian microblogging platform is shutting down the app, on account of a four-year-old startup’s decision to halt was sparked earlier this week after its acquisition by “Dailyhunt” an online media firm failed, its founders Aprameya Radhakrishnan and Mayank Bidawatka stated on LinkedIn.
It was launched in 2020 and in these four years of its journey, Koo confronted a lot of struggles. The company jinxed to raise additional funds cutting its workforce down to a fifth. Koo also failed to raise over $50 million from investors like Accel, Kalaari, Tiger Global, 3one4 and Blume Ventures and further gave up its plan to expand its user base in these years.
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The founders said in the post that they are going to curtain the venture and call it a final pause. The company will discontinue its service and the public will no longer be able to access the app in future. The post further added that the “Koo” app maintained its partnership with prominent companies and media houses but in vain, they are now on the verge of shutting down its service at the earliest.
“The cost of technology service is a bit high and we had no way to keep the app running as we failed to generate revenue as most of them didn’t want to deal with user-generated content because of the bizarre traits of social media companies. We are taking this tough decision as we lose hope in its smooth function”, the post added.
Koo was co-founded by Aprameya Radhakrishna and Mayank Bidawatka in 2020, It was accepted by many including celebrities and known as Twitter rival during that time. Koo and Dailyhunt had been going through talks to subsume the former but fell short. A large number of employees reportedly said that Koo struggled to thrive in an increasingly difficult funding atmosphere and have undergone financial issues and tussles.
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Koo has garnered an operating income of Rs 14 lakh and a staggering 197 Cr loss in FY22, hence the platform fought to generate viable revenue and lost desperately burning cash to reach active users for the app. The start-up remained silent and didn’t file the audited financial reports. Koo also stopped customer acquisition campaigns in June 2022, which further led to a massive decrease in active user profiles.
