When it comes to micro blogging, Twitter is the app that comes to our mind. But did you know India has its own micro blogging app too. Funnily enough it is called Koo.
According to Wikipedia: Koo is an Indian microblogging and social networking service based in Bengaluru, India. Formerly known as Ku Koo Ku, the app was developed by Aprameya Radhakrishna and Mayank Bidawatka. It won the Government of India’s Aatmanirbhar App Innovation Challenge in August 2020.The app is currently valued at over $100 million.
Koo was founded on 1st March, 2020 and has Aprameya Radhakrishna as its CEO. Currently (as of May 2021) the platform has 6 million users with several new users joining everyday. Koo was first launched in Kannada and now supports Hindi, English, Tamil, Telugu, Assamese and Marathi. The app is planning to expand its language database in order to make it more accessible to the Indian people.
Koo bears a lot of similarities with Twitter. Starting from the logo. Twitter’s logo is a white bird while Koo’s logo is a yellow bird, the bird factor being common. Furthermore, users on Koo can categorize their posts with hashtags “#“. Another similarity is the ability to tag/mention a user by using the “@” sign. Koo even verifies people, and gives them a verification badge via a yellow tick, similar to Twitter which does the same via a blue tick. Koo even has a “Talk to Type“, which allows users to write a post by speaking via the app’s voice assistant. The app even has a “Trending” section tab which shows the trending topics that people are talking about.
Out of millions of people, many notable personalities have joined Koo too. Anupam Kher and Piyush Goyal to name a few. Renowned YouTube vlogger Gaurav Taneja aka Flying Beast is also a user too.
Gaurav Tanejagi@flyingbeast320my first koo …
Popular Tech Youtubers Amit Bhawani aka Phone Radar also uses the app.
Amit Bhawanigi@amitbhawaniKya KOOl hai hum 🙂 🙂
It is too soon to comment on the future of the Koo app. The app has garnered millions of users but it is still far behind the number of users on Twitter. However with steady growth and marketing Koo as a platform will be able to make a name for itself in India and beyond.
