?? Koo’s survival instinct
Last week, The Arc reported that India’s Twitter alternative, Koo, had reached out to strategic investors for a majority stake sale after facing a cash crunch. Koo co-founder Mayank Bidawatka confirmed the step on LinkedIn this week.
“With the current reality of a slow investor market, the best way forward is to partner with someone who has the distribution strength to give Koo a massive user impetus and help it grow,” he wrote.
Essentially, the company needs to piggyback off an established player with a sizable customer base, which will help it save money on acquiring new users.
Building a social-media business is expensive. Koo has nearly depleted the Rs 400 crore raised over the past two years. It currently has fewer than 1 million active users, even though the app has racked up 60 million downloads.
“Koo will succeed only if Twitter is banned in India,” an investor had said in 2021 after backing the Bengaluru-based company.
The investor believed that US-based platforms’ frequent run-ins with Indian authorities would result in more TikTok-like exits, benefiting Koo and other domestic ventures. TikTok ’s departure in 2020 brought millions of users to short-form video apps #Josh and #Moj. YouTube , Facebook and Instagram continue to rule India’s social-media market. Local startups have been unable to loosen their hold as of yet.
As Koo’s founders review their options, it will be interesting to see where they land.
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Arc Notes?
- Beginning in 2012, GreyOrange built a business by putting its mechanical bots on warehouse duty — sifting through, storing and retrieving packages — for multiple industries, particularly retail. But this core offering is now becoming a secondary play for the robotics startup. ?
- Software has emerged as the leading growth driver, prompting it to act more like a SaaS player. An end-to-end program used to deploy and manage bots on sites generates the most revenue among its business lines.
- In April, the positions of co-founders Akash Gupta and Samay Kohli were changed to signal this new focus. Gupta, who was leading software products, replaced Kohli as the CEO. Kohli has moved out of an operating role but remains on the board.
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