Indian social media platform Koo, which positioned itself as a competitor to Elon Musk’s X platform, has halted operations after recent acquisition talks with Dailyhunt collapsed.
Despite securing over $60 million in funding from notable investors including Tiger Global and Accel, Koo has faced significant challenges in growing its user base and generating revenue over the past two years.
In February, TechCrunch exclusively reported that Koo was in talks with Dailyhunt, an online media startup valued at $5 billion, for a potential sale. Koo’s founders said Wednesday that the talks had not resulted in a deal.
“We explored partnerships with several major internet companies, conglomerates and media organizations, but those conversations did not yield the outcome we wanted,” Koo co-founders Aprameya Radhakrishna and Mayank Bidawatka books “Most didn’t want to deal with user-generated content and the wild nature of a social media company,” one participant said in a LinkedIn post on Wednesday.
Kuo sought to win over users in India by giving them a platform similar to X where they could express themselves in multiple local languages. Kuo initially gained popularity in India during a period of tension between Twitter and the Indian government. The conflict arose after Twitter challenged the government’s vague requests to remove content.
Last year, Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey alleged that the Indian government had threatened to shut down the social network in the country and raid the homes of its employees. (The Indian government denied Dorsey’s allegations, with a senior minister at the time saying Dorsey was trying to “erase that very questionable period from Twitter’s history.”)
Koo seized on the situation and positioned itself as a more compliant alternative, pledging to abide by local regulations. The approach attracted several prominent Indian politicians to the platform, though almost none from the opposition party. The startup also expanded its eponymous app to Brazil.
But the prolonged funding winter, which has forced startups worldwide to boost revenue and improve their finances, “got the better of us,” the Co founders said.
For years, Indian entrepreneurs and investors have been racing to create local alternatives to popular platforms like Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Twitter, and YouTube. And it’s increasingly clear that these established American companies are showing a superior ability to serve even the most diverse segments of the Indian market.