Koo, an Indian social media platform that was positioned as a rival to Elon Musk's X, is shutting down after last-ditch acquisition talks with Daily Hunt fell apart.
Despite securing over $60 million in funding from prominent investors such as Tiger Global and Accel, Koo faced significant challenges in growing its user base and generating revenue over the past two years.
TechCrunch exclusively reported in February that Koo was in talks with Daily Hunt, an internet media startup valued at $5 billion, about a possible sale. Koo's founders said Wednesday that the talks had not resulted in an agreement.
“We explored partnerships with several large internet companies, conglomerates and media companies, but these discussions did not yield the results we hoped for,” Koo founders Aprameya Radhakrishna and Mayank Bidawatka said in a LinkedIn post on Wednesday. “Most of them did not want to deal with user-generated content and the rough nature of social media companies.”
Koo sought to attract users in India by offering an X-like platform where people could express themselves in multiple local languages. Koo's popularity in India came at a time of rising tensions between Twitter and the Indian government, which surfaced after Twitter challenged the government's requests for opaque content removal.
Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey alleged last year that the Indian government had threatened to shut down the social network in the country and search employees' homes. (The Indian government denied Dorsey's claims, with its top minister at the time saying Dorsey was “trying to erase a very questionable period in Twitter's history.”)
Koo took advantage of the situation, positioning itself as a more compliant alternative and pledging to abide by local regulations. This approach attracted a number of prominent Indian politicians to the platform, though few from the opposition. The startup has also rolled out its eponymous app to Brazil.
But the extended fundraising winter, which has forced startups around the world to grow revenue and improve their financials, “overwhelmed us,” Koo's founders said.
For years, Indian entrepreneurs and investors have been racing to develop homegrown alternatives to popular platforms like Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Twitter, YouTube, etc. It has become increasingly clear that these established U.S. companies are demonstrating a superior ability to serve even the most diverse segments of the Indian market.