Koo, the Indian alternative to Twitter, seeks a strategic partner amid funding crisis

Koo, India’s alternative to Twitter, is seeking a partner with “distribution strength” as it enters its “next phase”, its co-founder said, amid a funding crisis within of the startup, supported by Accel and Tiger Global. .

Koo co-founder Mayank Bidawatka wrote in a LinkedIn post that the startup — which has raised more than $50 million to date, according to risk analytics platform The Kredible — planned to continue to to focus on its size, but declining market conditions forced it to do so. moving from a growth trajectory to a revenue-generating engine.

“From growing rapidly to scaling back and demonstrating unit profitability, in six months of revenue experimentation, we took a 180-degree turn and proved it was of a real business,” he wrote.

The social network is banking on the idea that its approach of supporting multiple local languages ​​will help the eponymous app resonate widely with as many people as possible. The platform has attracted many Indian politicians and sports figures over the past two years.

Koo – which has been trying to put together a new funding round for at least three quarters, according to two people familiar with the matter – needs either funding or a strategic partnership for its “next phase,” he said. -he writes. “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 boost as a user and help to develop.”

Bidawatka’s post is a response to local media reports from earlier this month that the startup was struggling with cash flow and was looking for merger and acquisition opportunities. The company has approached several players, including Microsoft, The Arc reported.

“With just 6 more months on our trajectory, we would have beaten Twitter in India,” he wrote, saying that even Meta, the “godfather of social platforms,” takes time to build basic functionality in the Threads app.

Koo, which operates in markets including India and Brazil, had fewer than 1 million monthly active users on its app, according to mobile intelligence firm Sensor Tower, whose data was shared by an executive at the sector with TechCrunch.