The Indian social media platform Koo is shutting down after acquisition talks with Dailyhunt fell through. Despite securing over $60 million in funding from prominent investors including Tiger Global and Accel, Koo faced significant challenges in expanding its user base and generating revenue over the past year.
TechCrunch exclusively reported in February that Koo was engaging with Dailyhunt, an internet media startup valued at $5 billion, for a potential sale. But the talks didn’t materialize into a deal, Koo founders said Wednesday.
“We explored partnerships with multiple larger internet companies, conglomerates and media houses but these talks didn’t yield the outcome we wanted,” Koo founders Aprameya Radhakrishna and Mayank Bidawatka wrote in a LinkedIn post Wednesday. “Most of them didn’t want to deal with user generated content and the wild nature of a social media company.”
Koo sought to win users by giving them an X-like platform where they could express themselves in multiple local languages. The startup also had also expanded its eponymous app to Brazil.
But a prolonged funding winter, which forced startups globally to scale their revenue and improve their finances, “got the better of us,” Koo founders said.