Social media platform, Koo, which has X (Twitter) features is shutting down four years after launch. Co-founders Aprameya Radhakrishna and Mayank Bidawatka announced this, citing the inability to raise funds and unfavorable market sentiment.
Koo, which first launched in India in 2020, announced its official launch in Nigeria in 2021 at a time the Federal Government banned Twitter. It became the favourite of the Federal government as all official handles were moved to the platform.
But it failed to gather tractions as Nigerians, through the use of VPN during the ban by President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration, continued to use Twitter until the ban was eventually lifted.
Koo was officially launched in Nigeria in August 2021, two months after the Nigerian government banned Twitter. FG had banned Twitter on June 4, 2021 with the claim that the app was used to incite violence in the country, among other issues.
Radhakrishna and Bidawatka in a LinkedIn post announcing the of Koo said they initiated partnerships with different tech and media companies to sustain the company but it failed.
“Our partnership talks fell through and we will be discontinuing our service to the public. We explored partnerships with multiple larger internet companies, conglomerates, and media houses but these talks didn’t yield the outcome we wanted.
“Most of them didn’t want to deal with user-generated content and the wild nature of a social media company. A couple of them changed priority almost close to signing.
“While we would’ve liked to keep the app running, the cost of technology services to keep a social media app running is high and we’ve had to take this tough decision,” the founders said.
