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Homegrown microblogging platform Koo gained immense popularity and social media traction after the Indian government had a sort of fall out with Twitter back in February this year.
The app took advantage of the situation and launched itself in the middle of the government’s clash with the international micro-blogging platform. Today, Koo boasts of 5.5 million downloads and has set a target of 100 million users in the next 18 months. The company also plans to monetise the website once this milestone is achieved.
“We are not focused on monetising right now and will grow the user base to a certain extent, after which we will focus on monetising through advertising, branding, and virtual gifting,” Aprameya Radhakrishna, CEO and co-founder, Koo and Voka was quoted in a Business Standard report.
With the current Indian ecosystem witnessing a fantastic boom as far as start-ups are concerned, Koo hopes to raise more funds to scale up the company. It is eyeing to position itself in international markets like Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines after cracking the India market.
While the platform rose to fame as a potential competitor to Twitter, its founder Radhakrishna believes in the concept of co-existence rather than eliminating one another.
“I think Twitter will connect with the English-speaking audience across countries. These are two different markets, so both platforms can coexist,” he was quoted as saying.
The platform is currently available in eight languages including Kannada, Tamil, Telugu, and Marathi, and will be rolling out in over a dozen others next year.
As per reports, the platform is in talks with US-based firm Tiger Global which has recently funded companies likes Groww and Gupshup. However, Radhakrishna maintained the company was in talks with multiple people for the next round of funding.
Koo raised $4.1 million in February this year from new investor 3one4 Capital and existing investors Accel Partners, Kalaari Capital, Blume Ventures, and Dream Incubator.