Another Made in India initiative, Koo, is offering an alternative to the US-based micro-blogging site Twitter. The App was launched in March 2020 and was founded by a Bangalore-based start-up, co-founded by Aprami Radhakrishna, who is also its CEO and an alumnus of India Institute of Management Ahmedabad.
About Koo and its Founder
Koo is an app like Twitter which was launched around 10 months ago. The app was developed by Aparameya Radhakrishna and Mayank Bidawatka. Radhakrishna had found an online cab booking service ‘TaxiForSure’, which was subsequently sold to Ola cabs. Just 10% of India speaks English; almost 1 billion people in India don’t know English. The app is available in several languages, making it more attractive to the country’s non-English and non-Hindi speaking communities including Hindi, Telugu, Kannada, Bengali, Tamil, Malayalam, Gujarati, Marathi, Punjabi, Odiya, and Assamese.
Top 3 Things to Know about Twitter Alternative Koo
What can be done on Koo?
Koo has a character limit of 400 and does allows you to do almost everything that you are used to doing on Twitter, like following other users, sharing your opinions, posting audios, videos & pictures, attach YouTube and other web links. You can view your feed in several Indian languages and will also show what is trending.
Investors
Micro-blogging start-up has raised an investment from an early-stage venture capital firm, 3one4 capital. The App achieved a landmark as it raised about 30 crores from investment from an entity backed by former CEO of Infosys, Mohandas Pai. Kalaari Capital, Accel Partners, Blume Ventures, and Dream Incubator are its existing investors.
How to Download
The app can be downloaded from the Google play store and iOS app store. It can be accessed from web browsers too. Unlike Twitter, all the users must have a valid mobile number that is verified via an OTP while registering for the first time. The App has a 4.7-star rating on Google Play Store with approximately 2.5 million downloads till now and about a million active users.
Recognition from Prime Minister Narendra Modi
Amid the center’s friction with Twitter over the American company’s refusal to block around 1,400 accounts it wants to be suspended, the Indian platform Koo is interpreted as an attempt to direct followers towards an in-house alternative. The App has recently won the Atmanirbhar App challenge and has received appreciation from the Prime Minister of India Narendra Modi in his Mann Ki Baat radio broadcast.
Indian Railways Minister, Piyush Goyal announced in a tweet that he has joined a new made-in-India Twitter alternative. The social media platform Koo is very similar to Twitter and calls itself “The voice of India.”
