Nearly a third of Koo’s staff have been laid off in recent months as the company battles losses and a lack of funding.  

The startup, which was expected to rival Twitter, reported that during the course of the year, 30 per cent of its 260-person team was laid off.

As a result of Twitter’s dispute with the Indian government over the material on its platform, many Indians, including government officials, cricket players, and stars from the Hindi film industry, rushed to Koo as a local alternative.

This initially helped the Bengaluru-based startup. The present liquidity crunch, however, coincides with a global downturn for technology firms and a slump in investment activity that have cut billions off the valuations of once-flying startups.

Koo is “well capitalised,” with more than 60 million downloads, and the company is attempting to become profitable through monetisation initiatives, according to Co-founder Mayank Bidawatka in an interview. He also mentioned that it presently has one of the greatest revenue per user among other social media firms.

To get through this moment, the three-year-old company noted that it was crucial for companies of all sizes to adopt “efficient and conservative approaches. The corporation claimed that it helped employees through compensation packages, expanded health benefits, and outplacement assistance, even though the layoffs were in line with this.

In comparison to Indian social media firms and direct international competition, Koo says that within six months of starting its monetisation efforts, it had one of the highest ARPUs (average revenue per user) per DAUs (daily active users).

Koo in 2021 launched its operations in Nigeria two months after the President Muhammadu Buhari regime suspended Twitter operations in the country.

Mr Buhari regime alleged that Twitter was being used to undermine “Nigeria’s corporate existence.” The regime launched an official account on Koo less than a week after suspending Twitter operations, encouraging Nigerians and other federal and state agencies to get registered on the app.