The prohibition of 59 Chinese applications in India has opened the door for several Indian businesses and entrepreneurs to build “Made in India” items. The bulk of these firms is creating goods that can be accessible in local languages, focusing on Tier II and III cities and other rural areas of India.
What is Koo App?
The microblogging platform Koo was established in 2020 by Aprameya Radhakrishna and Mayank Bidawatka. Aprameya Radhakrishna was also the creator of TaxiForSure, another well-known firm. The pair also co-founded the app Vokal, an audio-video knowledge-sharing platform akin to Quora.
Despite being published in early 2020, the app shot to fame after winning the government’s Atmanirbhar App Innovation Challenge (AAIC). The Centre established the AAIC shortly after banning a wave of Chinese-linked applications, claiming national security concerns. Along with others from India like Zoho and Chingari, this program won the competition. Following the Atmanirbhar App Innovation Challenge results, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi mentioned this app in his Mann Ki Baat address.
How much is Koo’s Growth?
According to Koo’s cofounder Bidawatka, the unexpected spike in Koo’s popularity may be traced back to the surge in the use of digital payment applications in India following the late-2016 ban on high-value currency notes. Radhakrishna, Koo’s co-founder, and CEO stated that he is expanding the Company’s network and increasing its technical staff to welcome more high-profile visitors, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi if he joins. According to him, following Twitter’s unwillingness to remove certain Indian accounts and tweets, it has continued to observe an unusual rise in new users of 10-20x that of a regular day.
What is Koo’s Revenue model?
The Koo business model is centered on a platform. The Koo revenue model is still being investigated. According to the creator, the app is searching for scalable revenue and exploring the advertising approach. They do, however, wish to take a more focused approach, concentrating on the demographics and interests of their consumers.
Koo’s acquisition
Funding
With the most recent funding round in May 2021, the Company raised approximately $30 million from various investors, including Tiger Global, IIFL Venture Capital Fund, Mirae Asset Management, and other existing investors, resulting in a five-fold increase in Koo’s total valuation.
Koo has successfully raised $34 million in three investment rounds since the Company’s inception in 2021. It had 5 million downloads in the preceding quarter as of October 25th, 2021. In October, Koo began spending 2.6 lakh per day on Facebook to outperform Twitter. After surpassing 15 million users, Koo is looking to expand into a new market in South East Asia.
On August 25th, 2021, Koo declared that it had reached one crore downloads. The firm claims to have come a million customers in just 16 months since its inception. Koo also claims to have over a thousand celebrities on its site. It has stated that it has over one lakh creators in total.
Although Twitter is being scrutinized in India, native vernacular microblogging site Koo, which has already topped 15 million members, plans to reach 100 million by the end of the year, according to its cofounder, Mayank Bidawatka. He believes that the Company is prepared to handle such much traffic since it is investing in technology that can take such a massive user base on a wide scale.
