India's very own micro-blogging platform Koo has raised $30 million in Series B funding, the company said on Wednesday. The funding round was led by Tiger Global, while Koo's other investors like Accel Partners, Kalaari Capital, Blume Ventures and Dream Incubator also made fresh investments.
Koo, the vernacular micro-blogging platform Koo founded by Indian entrepreneurs as an answer to Twitter, has already racked up as many as six million users. The company aims to add up to 100 million users in the current year, it has said.
"We have aggressive plans to grow into one of the world's largest social media platforms in the next few years. Every Indian is cheering for us to get there soon. Tiger Global is the right partner to have on board to realise this dream," Aprameya Radhakrishna, co-founder and CEO of Koo, said, according to IANS.
The app said in a statement that IIFL and Mirae Assets, two new investors, have also participated in the current funding round.
Koo is beefing up its finances and spreading wings at a time social media companies including Twitter are locked in a battle with the Indian government over regulatory and compliance laws. Twitter, Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram are dealing with a government deadline to execute a host of oversight rules, failing which they will lose the intermediary status.
It is expected that the uncertainty over the compliance environment for major social media platforms will give a fillip to the homegrown medium.
Koo, the Indian version of Twitter, was launched in March 2020. The Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi, had famously encouraged users to use the app in his "Mann Ki Baat" speech.
Koo Complies with Government Regulations
The app was co-founded by entrepreneurs Aprameya Radhakrishna and Mayank Bidwatka. This new microblogging site said that it had verified handles of MeitY, MyGov, Digital India, India Post, National Informatics Centre, National Institute of Electronics and Information Technology, Digi Locker, National Internet Exchange of India, Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs, among others, on its platform.
In a statement, Koo said: "Key organizations from the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MEITY) have set up accounts on Koo, India's own micro-blogging platform. This move comes as a strategic response as an action against Twitter for not complying with the order for blocking around 257 Tweets and Twitter accounts which were tweeting about farmer genocide."
Koo said last week that has complied with the new guidelines for social media platforms issued by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology in February this year.
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