India’s homegrown social media platform Koo, and the twin to social media giant Twitter has just closed a successful round of financing, as the country draws closer and closer to a standoff with the US tech industry.
Through its Series B round of funding led by Tiger Global, Koo has managed to raise $30 million.
The funds raised during this round will be used for strengthening engineering, community, and product efforts across all Indian languages.
Apart from new groups Tiger Global, Mirae Assets, and IIFL, existing investors like Kalaari Capital, Accel Partners, Dream Incubator, and Blume Ventures, were also present during the financial round.
“We have aggressive plans to grow into one of the world’s largest social media platforms in the next few years. Every Indian is cheering for us to get there soon. Tiger Global is the right partner to have on board to realize this dream,” were the words of Aprameya Radhakrishna, the CEO and Co-Founder of the Koo app.
The Indian microblogging site is new valued at an estimated price of more than $100 million, up more than four times from its value of $25 million only a few months ago, back in February.
Set up Radhakrishna and Mayank Bidawatka (previously from Goodbox and Media Ant), Koo has been gaining popularity amid reports of censorship and market monopoly by Twitter. Moreover, it also became the first company to accept the provisions under the new IT rules declared by the Indian IT ministry a few months ago.
The Koo app is quite similar in design and functionality to Twitter, and hence, is usually deemed a desi alternative to to same. Currently, it provides services in more than 12 Indian languages (and plans to expand its platform to include many other languages, using the fresh funds), and has a logo and interface which is akin to that available on Twitter.
For the unversed, the new rules require social media platforms (or specifically, “significant social media intermediaries”) to set up an exhaustive three-tier grievance redress system, and publish compliance reports monthly.
Koo has incorporated the new guidelines into its Privacy Policy and Community Guidelines, as revealed by a statement made by the platform earlier.
Through the app, Radhakrishna hopes to create a community fit for, and covering, the entire nation, and not just parts of it. The app has gained quite a lot of traction in the past few months, with a number of politicians and ministers (especially those from the ruling BJP government) having joined its platform due to the rising problems between the Indian government and Twitter Inc.
