While American microblogging site Twitter is embroiled in a toolkit controversy, its Indian rival Koo is getting a boost. Koo has raised $30 million in Series B funding, which would expand its valuation by up to five times to $100 million. American investment firm Tiger Global has emerged as the leading investor in the latest round of funding. The funding assumes significance considering that Koo is the only major social media site to have fully complied with the Indian government’s new IT rules.
Tiger Global which has been among the biggest investors in the Indian startup ecosystem has also emerged as the leading investor in this round of funding. IIFL and Mirae Assets were the new investors to come on board. Some existing investors including Accel Partners, Kalaari Capital, Blume Ventures, and Dream Incubator also took part in the round.
Launched in March 2020, downloads of the Koo app have doubled from about 3 million in February to 6 million to date. The app gained prominence when it won the Atmanirbhar App Innovation Challenge. Subsequently, a number of union ministers and government departments started flocking to the social media site. This was happening at a time when disagreements between Twitter and the Modi government were growing over the blocking of some accounts and the new IT rules formulated by the center. On Monday, officials of the Delhi Police Special Cell visited Twitter’s office in the national capital in connection with the alleged ‘Congress toolkit’.
The fresh funding obtained will be used by Koo to strengthen its product’s an engineering and community outreach across all Indian languages. Currently, the app allows its users to post in Marathi, Tamil, and Kannada, in addition to English and Hindi. “This(round of funding) gives us a big boost in terms of financial resources. We can recruit talented people, invest more in technology, work further on the product, and ensure that the systems are not hacked at this scale of operations. We are doing this to cater to the next wave (of users),” Radhakrishna told to The Economic Times.