Two Indian start-ups in two different sectors are staring at very different fortunes.
While social media platform Koo, which had pitched itself as a home-grown alternative to Twitter (now X), is shutting down, the country’s largest cryptocurrency exchange CoinDCX has announced expansion into the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) region with the acquisition of BitOasis.
In a post on LinkedIn, Koo co-founders Aprameya Radhakrishna and Mayank Bidawatka announced that the platform will be discontinuing its services to the public.
“We explored a partnership with multiple larger internet companies, conglomerates and media houses but these talks didn’t yield the outcome we wanted,” the note said.
“Most of them didn’t want to deal with user generated content and the wild nature of a social media company. A couple of them had changed priority almost close to signing,” the note said.
The duo said that although they would have liked to keep the app running, “the cost of technology services to keep a social media app running is high and we’ve had to take this tough decision”.
Koo at its peak grossed about 2.1 million daily active users, about 10 million monthly active users and over 9,000 VIPs that included some of the most prominent personalities from various fields.
Koo was last valued at $275 million after raising over $6 million from investors such as 3one4 Capital and Accel.
“We were just months away from beating Twitter in India in 2022 and could have doubled down on that short term goal with capital behind us,” they said.
“Unfortunately for us, the mood of the market and the funding winter got better of us,” the note mentioned as the founders signed off saying, “the little yellow bird says its final goodbye” in a reference to Koo’s yellow bird logo.
Koo’s popularity in India had peaked around 2021 amid the Indian government’s spat with Twitter (now X) and growing calls for expanding the ecosystem of homegrown digital platforms.
At its peak, Koo experienced heady growth in user metrics as Union ministers and government departments endorsed the microblogging platform.
Meanwhile, Dubai-based BitOasis, which had secured strategic investment from CoinDCX in August 2023, has come under the fold of the Indian cryptocurrency exchange.
“Building on six years of success and supporting more than 15 million Indians in their crypto journey, CoinDCX aims to become the go-to trading platform for crypto worldwide. For us, investor protection has been paramount, and we have distinguished ourselves in India with unwavering compliance. We are committed to upholding the same standards wherever we operate,” said Sumit Gupta, co-founder, CoinDCX.
“Our expansion begins with the MENA region, capitalising on its mature market and the population’s keen interest in crypto investment,” said Gupta.
BitOasis is a popular platform among retail, institutional and HNIs in the GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council) and MENA region.
