According to its co-founder, Koo, India’s Twitter rival, is searching for a strategic partner with a “distribution strength” as it approaches its “next phase” despite a cash shortage at the business, which is supported by Accel and Tiger Global. The startup Koo, which, according to venture insight platform The Kredible, has raised over $50 million to date, had planned to continue focusing on its scale, but the deteriorating market conditions forced it to “switch gears […] to a revenue-generating engine,” according to co-founder Mayank Bidawatka in a Friday LinkedIn post.
Within six months of revenue experimentation, “we took a 180-degree swing and proved that this is a real business,” he wrote. “From growing rapidly to cutting back on growth and showing unit economics. The social network is putting its money on the eponymous app connecting with a wider audience thanks to its strategy of supporting multiple local languages. In the past two years, the forum has drawn numerous Indian leaders and athletes.
For its “next phase,” Koo needs either cash or a strategic collaboration, according to two people familiar with the situation. Koo has been trying to pull together a fresh investment round for at least three quarters. The wisest course of action, given the slow investor market that is now in place, is to collaborate with someone who has the distribution power to give Koo a significant user push and support its growth.
Following earlier local media reports that said Koo was short on cash and was looking for a strategic sale, Bidawatka’s message was published. According to The Arc, the company has contacted several players, including Microsoft. He added, “With just 6 more months on our trajectory, we would have beaten Twitter in India,” claiming that even Meta, the “Godfather of social platforms,” is taking time to develop fundamental features for the Threads app.
According to data from mobile intelligence company Sensor Tower that an industry executive shared with TechCrunch, Koo, which has operations in markets including India and Brazil, has fewer than 1 million monthly active users on its app.
