Social media startup Koo, which positioned itself as the homegrown alternative to X (formerly Twitter), is shutting down its service after prolonged acquisition talks fell through.
Founded by Aprameya Radhakrishna and Mayank Bidawatka in 2019 and launched in March 2020, Koo gained prominence during the 2021 standoff between the Indian government and Twitter (now X) over the latter’s takedown requests related to farmer protests.
“Here’s the final update from our end. Our partnership talks fell through, and we will be discontinuing our service (the Koo platform) to the public. We explored partnerships with multiple larger internet companies, conglomerates, and media houses, but talks didn’t yield the outcome we wanted,” Radhakrishna and Bidawatka said in a joint statement on LinkedIn.
The founders highlighted their achievements, stating they built a “globally scalable product in a fraction of the time that X/Twitter did, with superior systems, algorithms, and strong stakeholder-first philosophies.”
“We explored partnerships with multiple larger internet companies, conglomerates, and media houses, but these talks didn’t yield the outcome we wanted. Most of them didn’t want to deal with user-generated content and the unpredictable nature of a social media company,” the co-founders said in their LinkedIn post on July 3.
“A couple of them changed priorities, almost close to signing. While we would have liked to keep the app running, the cost of technology services to maintain a social media app is high, and we’ve had to make this tough decision,” they added.
