The microblogging website, touted as a desi alternative to Twitter, saw monthly active users fall to about 3.1 million in April 2023, in the third straight month of decline this year. Company says it is well-capitalised and remains positive about building a social media platform from India for the world.
The Tiger Global-backed startup has trimmed 30% of its 260-member workforce, or about 80 employees, over the past year or so.
The co-founder and CEO of Koo, Aprameya Radhakrishna, urged Twitter users to “switch to Koo” amid reports that Twitter is planning to start charging its users for a blue tick verification badge.
The Koo spokesperson said that the company’s workforce was streamlined to meet current business requirements as Koo is currently going through a rapid growth phase.
Koo will maintain its sharp focus on the Indian market, onboarding more and more users, even as it plans to venture into one new market in Southeast Asia after June 2022.
“People on Twitter are connected outside the country. They are all following Elon Musk. This is to say that they are dense outside India, sparse within India, within their own networks, which is the English-speaking India. Let us look at Koo. People from smaller cities of Karnataka or Tamil Nadu are heavily interconnected within the language networks”. This is how the CEO differentiates Koo from Twitter.
Twitter-rival Koo has crossed the milestone of 1 crore users within 15-16 months of its launch.
Aprameya Radhakrishna, co-founder of Koo, which is benefitting from Twitter’s row with the Indian government, says his microblogging site will bring together English and non-English speaking users.
In the start up world you either make it or you burn out. That is exactly what happened in the radio taxi space with Ola and Taxi for Sure. Last week co founders Aprameya Radhakrishna and Raghunandan G of Taxi for Sure exited the venture just a month and half after selling their business to Ola.
Founded by Raghunandan and Aprameya Radhakrishna in 2011, TaxiForSure is an aggregator of independent car rental companies and taxi owners.