India's Twitter rival Koo hit a $275M valuation — then shut down two years later

Koo launched in 2019 from Bengaluru founders Aprameya Radhakrishna and Mayank Bidawatka as India's home-grown answer to Twitter: a yellow-bird microblogging app in Indian languages. Its moment came in 2020 and 2021, when Indian users and ministers sought local alternatives to the global platforms, and Koo rode the wave to a $275M valuation in November 2022 on about $36M raised.

The wave was the whole business. At peak Koo had roughly 10 million monthly users and 2.1 million daily ones, but no advertising engine to monetise them, and the partnerships meant to replace one never closed. Layoffs began in April 2023. On 3 July 2024 the company announced it was shutting down, citing an unpredictable capital market, failed partnerships and technology costs it could no longer carry.

The pattern is the platform version of a subsidy business: users acquired by circumstance rather than preference leave the moment the circumstance changes. The global platforms' troubles in India were real, but they were not a feature Koo had built — and when the funding winter arrived, there was no retention to fall back on and no revenue to fall back with.