India’s Twitter rival Koo has raised $30 million in Series B funding led by Tiger Global. Existing investors if Koo such as Accel Partners, Kalaari Capital, Blume Ventures and Dream Incubator also participated in this round of funding. This round also values the social media company close to $150 million.
Koo was founded by Aprameya Radhakrishna (who also co-founded TaxiForSure) and Mayank Bidawatka back in March 2020. The company saw a boost earlier this year when Twitter was found supporting a specific ideology. The company now has over 6 million users including several celebrities and Union ministers such as Ravi Shankar Prasad and Prakash Javedkar.
This funding comes at a time when Twitter is already facing action from the Indian government over several issues including manipulated media and its political biasedness. If this continues, Twitter could face a ban in the country.
Koo initially promoted itself as an Indian platform and requested Indian people to promote a local social media platform. But the company found itself in trouble when people found that this Indian platform has a Chinese investor which owns a 9 percent stake in the company. Later the Chinese investor exited the company as existing investors and other Indian individuals bought stakes.
Along with angel funds, Koo has also been backed by several individuals including former Indian cricketer Javagal Srinath, BookMyShow Founder Ashish Hemrajani, Udaan Co-Founder Sujeet Kumar, Flipkart CEO Kalyan Krishnamurthy, and Zerodha Founder Nikhil Kamath.
Tiger Global is one of the most successful investors the Indian startup ecosystem has seen in the past 20 months. The company backed over 20 Indian unicorns. It really trusts Indian startups. The most notable investment of Tiger Global in India includes investment in Flipkart, Ola, Zomato, CRED, Groww, Delhivery Grofers, Myntra, InShorts, Ather Energy, Saavn, Razorpay, and TVF.
