IANS | 18 Sep, 2023
Homegrown micro-blogging platform Koo, once touted as the Twitter
rival but later saw its growth dwindling amid economic slowdown, is now
looking to "partner with someone who has the distribution strength to
give Koo a massive user impetus and help it grow", its Co-founder Mayank
Bidawatka said on Friday.
In a LinkedIn post, Bidawatka said that
the next phase for Koo is to "build scale and that will happen with
either funding or through a strategic partnership with someone who
already has scale" in the "current reality of a slow investor market".
According to reports, Koo has raised over $50 million to date.
Bidawatka said that 2023 has been one of the toughest years for the startup ecosystem around the world.
“Funding
has come to a standstill and only near breakeven or early stage
startups are lucky to raise funds, that too at low valuations/heavy
markdowns. While our stable state plan was to scale more before
generating revenue, Koo too was caught in this unfortunately sour market
timing and had to switch gears from a growth trajectory to a revenue
generating engine,” he elaborated.
In April this year, Koo said
that it had let go 30 per cent of its workforce over the course of the
year amid the current global meltdown.
The company had told IANS
that it is important for businesses of all sizes to adopt efficient and
conservative approaches to see this period through.
According to Bidawatka, it takes years to build a globally competitive microblog.
“From
growing rapidly to cutting down on growth and proving unit economics,
within 6 months of revenue experimentation, we took a 180 degree turn
and proved that this is a real business. While the market is
unfavourable, we as founders are committed to our dream, of taking Koo
to the world and beating the best, with Indian tech,” he said.
“With a platform that's scale ready, Koo can outshine competitors with the right push on growth,” said Bidawatka.
The company last raised $10 million in January this year.