Koo, the Indian social microblogging platform, is shutting down. Co-founder Mayank Bidawatka shared this news in a LinkedIn post, saying, "We will be discontinuing our service to the public." This announcement came after a report by The Morning Context said that Koo and DailyHunt's acquisition talks failed. Bidawatka confirmed this on LinkedIn. He wrote, "We tried many partnerships with big internet companies, but they didn't work out." He added, "Keeping a social media app running is expensive, so we had to make this tough decision."

Koo was started in March 2020 by Aprameya Radhakrishna and Mayank Bidawatka. It became popular after winning the AatmaNirbhar App Innovation Challenge in August 2020, organized by the Government of India. The app was meant to be India’s alternative to Twitter, promoting made-in-India products and services. In April 2023, Koo began reducing its staff to cut costs. Over a year, the team shrank by 30%, with around 80 employees laid off.

Koo aimed to let users post in local Indian languages, unlike other platforms like Twitter, which mainly used English. Bidawatka said, "We saw a big gap because most social products use English, but 80% of the world speaks other languages. We wanted to help people connect in their local languages."

Bidawatka believes Koo could have been India's Twitter but lacked enough funding. He said, "We built a great product quickly, with better systems and algorithms. Koo had a 10% like ratio, much higher than Twitter’s, making it better for creators. At our peak, we had about 2.1 million daily active users and around 10 million monthly active users, including 9000+ VIPs. We were close to beating Twitter in India in 2022."

Despite closing, Koo is still looking for good deals. Bidawatka said they would "be happy to share some assets with someone with a great vision for India's social media future." They might also turn Koo into a digital public good to support social conversations in local languages.