India’s X Alternative, Koo, Shuts Down Due to Funding Shortages

Koo, India’s local alternative to X (formerly Twitter), has announced its shutdown, leaving millions of users stranded. Launched in 2020, Koo offered a multilingual platform supporting over 10 Indian languages and gained prominence in 2021 amid a dispute between the Indian government and X.

The conflict began when Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s administration asked X to block accounts accused of spreading misinformation. X initially complied but later restored the accounts. This led to threats of legal action against its employees in India. The situation drove many government supporters and officials to migrate to Koo, boosting its downloads to 20 million by the end of 2021.

Despite this initial success, Koo struggled to secure sufficient funding. Founders Aprameya Radhakrishna and Mayank Bidawatka cited a prolonged funding crisis and high technology costs as primary reasons for the shutdown. Efforts to form partnerships with larger companies and media houses failed. Acquisition talks with news aggregator Dailyhunt did not also materialise.

In April 2023, Koo laid off 30% of its workforce due to financial losses. The founders expressed regret over the closure but explained that the costs of keeping the platform operational were unsustainable.

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