Koo

What did it do?

Koo was a microblogging and social networking app with a Twitter-like interface, developed by Bengaluru-based Bombinate Technologies. Users shared short posts and interacted through hashtags and mentions. Launched in early 2020, the app won the government's home-grown app competition and rose to prominence as a domestic alternative to Twitter.

Why did it shut down?

Koo's fastest periods of growth coincided with Twitter's crises in India, Nigeria and Brazil; once those waves passed, interest faded. In Nigeria, government officials stopped using Koo after the Twitter ban was lifted. The $6 million round in November 2022 was not enough to carry rising technology costs for long. In April 2024 it emerged that the company could pay salaries only if a possible sale went through. In July 2024 the founders shut the platform, citing unpredictable market conditions, partnerships that came to nothing and high technology service costs.

The story

In the first weeks of February 2021, India saw a curious migration. During the farmers' protests the government had asked for hundreds of accounts to be blocked, and Twitter had refused part of the request on free-speech grounds. After this stand-off, ministers, public officials and supporters of the ruling party moved to a home-grown app with a yellow bird logo and urged their followers to join them there. The app was called Koo, and within days its downloads were climbing fast.

Koo was developed by Bombinate Technologies, the Bengaluru-based company of Aprameya Radhakrishna and Mayank Bidawatka. Launched in early 2020, the app won the government's Atmanirbhar app innovation challenge, in which around 7,000 entries competed. According to Sensor Tower, Koo was downloaded 2.6 million times from Indian app stores that year; Twitter's downloads over the same period were 28 million. In April 2021 minister Ravi Shankar Prasad became the first minister to reach 2.5 million followers on Koo. In May 2021 a $30 million investment led by Tiger Global arrived, lifting the company's valuation from about $25 million in February to more than $100 million.

Later waves of growth also came from Twitter's troubles in other countries. When the Nigerian government banned Twitter indefinitely in June 2021, official bodies moved to Koo; but after the ban was lifted, officials were reported to have abandoned Koo in 2022. In November 2022, amid the turmoil caused by Elon Musk's takeover of Twitter, more than a million people signed up in Brazil in a single day; the fact that the app's name sounds like a rude word in Portuguese only added to the interest. That same month the company raised another $6 million and reached a valuation of more than $275 million.

Yet these waves never turned into a lasting user base. In April 2024 reports emerged that Koo was struggling to pay its staff their April salaries and that further salaries could be paid only if a possible sale went through. The sale did not happen. On 3 July 2024 the founders announced that they were shutting the platform, citing unpredictable market conditions, partnerships that came to nothing and high technology costs.

Koo's story shows how fragile growth born of someone else's crisis can be. Every wave brought new users, but the company never built a distinctive reason for them to stay or a revenue model to cover its costs.

Lessons for founders

• Do not mistake a wave of users arriving during a rival's crisis for something permanent; measure 30- and 90-day retention after the wave separately.
• Growth that leans on political or national sentiment fades just as fast when the agenda moves on; be clear about the value the product offers on its own.
• On a social network with heavy server costs, build the revenue model before scale arrives; otherwise every new wave of users comes back to you as cost.

Sources

1. Koo (social network) (Wikipedia)
2. Tiger Global leads $30 million investment in Indian Twitter rival Koo (TechCrunch, 2021-05-26)
3. Twitter drama has Brazilians flocking to Indian platform Koo (Rest of World, 2022-11-21)
4. https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q97621095
5. Wikipedia (English)

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