Koo Bags $30 Mn Funding Amidst Ongoing #TwitterBanIndia Trend Koo has once again raised funding when there is an outcry on Twitter about banning the blue-bird platform
By Debarghya Sil •
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Micro-blogging platform Koo on Wednesday announced it has raised $30 million funding in Series B round. The latest funding was led by Tiger Global and existing investors such as Accel Partners, Kalaari Capital, Blume Ventures and Dream Incubators have participated as well. Apart from America's Tiger Global, IIFL and Mirae Assets are new investors and have come on board in this round.
The startup plans to utilize the fresh capital to strengthen engineering, product and community efforts across all Indian languages at Koo.
Started in early 2020 by serial entrepreneurs Aprameya Radhakrishna, founder of Taxi For Sure and Mayank Bidawatka who previously founded companies like Media Ant and Goodbox, the startup claims to offer a micro-blogging platform with various Indian languages. The platform has as of now garnered around six million users. Some of Indian government social accounts too can be seen on the platform such as that of Ravi Shankar Prasad, Piyush Goyal and Smriti Irani, among others.
Commenting on the investment, Radhakrishna, co-founder and chief executive officer of Koo, said "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."
It cannot be overlooked that the startup has once again raised funding at a time when there is outcry on Twitter about banning the blue-bird platform. The latest reason behind calling a ban for Twitter is after the social media platform marked BJP leader Sambit Patra's tweet on "Congress Toolkit" as manipulated media. Following which Delhi Police special cell even visited Twitter India's office to serve notice. Apart from this the new IT guidelines are in place from today and as per media reports, Twitter, Instagram and others have not complied to the guidelines on many accounts till date. However, Koo is the only social media platform that has complied with the guidelines.
Koo raised its Series A round in early February, at a time when relationship between Twitter and the central government soured following the Republic Day violence caused because of farmers' protest. Back then there was a similar trend calling for a ban of Twitter on social media. Several government accounts back then had shifted to Koo and asked users on Twitter to follow them there.
