Twitter rival Koo shuts down; What a missed Chaupaal opportunity!

Koo raised $70mn (~600 crores) and had an effective revenue of 20L in FY 22

India’s twitter rival, Koo has shutdown.

This is what the founders have shared in their Linkedin post

In total, Koo raised $70mn (~600 crores) and had an effective revenue of 20L in FY 22 (which is fine as social networks typically take a while to bring revenue..and when they do, when the network effect kicks in, everybody envies them)

An opportunity missed

Koo cracked 2 things which very few startups in the Bharat market have:

• A blue ocean of opportunities (no social network was going after non-English market), and

• Early backers (thanks to founders network). It’s not easy raising even $10mn for a social network in a post-FB world (Koo ended up raising $70mn).

Koo had a great launch timing and was a perfect platform to leverage India’s rising digital wave.

Of course it did benefit from anti-Chinese and anti-everything sentiment, but the bigger opportunity was in building a Chaupal for the Indian mass.

A Chaupal, or chopal, is a community building or space in the rural areas. Although chaupals are fundamentally a feature of rural life, in the popular perception a chaupal is any place where people "sit and discuss their problems, celebrate their pleasures, share the pains of an individual, family or a particular group, sort out their disputes." It is "a sacred place of secular nature" that "guarantees freedom of speech and expression to everybody - via wikipedia

India definitely needed its own ‘chaupaal’, its own Townhall and given how much we as a country love to talk, share and discuss *everything*, Koo had immense possibilities – even at a micro community level (for e.g. an entire village using Koo for info awareness, crop pricing updates etc etc).

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What REALLY went wrong with Koo?

Koo was at the

• right time,

• right place but with the

• wrong intent/approach.

Given PM Modi’s anti-China and anti-Western sentiment during 2020/21, Koo was rightly timed and was able to attract a wide variety of audience - right from (BJP) politicians to actors like Kangana Ranaut.