Former cricketer Javagal Srinath among others buy out Shunwei's stake from Vokal and Koo

Last month, Aprameya Radhakrishna, Co-founder of Koo App— the Indian microblogging platform, announced that its Chinese investor, Shunwei Capital, was exiting the company. It has now announced that existing and new investors have bought Shunwei Capital's stake in Bombinate Technologies Pvt Ltd, the parent company of Vokal and Koo.

The company stated Shunwei Capital had held a little more than nine percent stake in the parent company. The new investors include - former Indian cricketer Javagal Srinath, BookMyShowFounder Ashish Hemrajani, UdaanCo-founder Sujeet Kumar, FlipkartCEO Kalyan Krishnamurthy, and ZerodhaCo-founder Nikhil Kamath.

Aprameya Radhakrishna, CEO and Co-founder, Koo said, “As earlier stated, we had been in discussion with Shunwei Capital to enable a smooth exit after it invested in our company 2.5 years ago while we were raising funds for Vokal and have now fully exited the parent company Bombinate Technologies."

ALSO READ

[App Fridays] This Made-in-India Twitter alternative lets you follow and interact with celebrities in local language

The company stated that Koo has been one of the first companies in India to be proactive in its actions of cleaning up its cap table and has doubled down on its commitment to build an Aatmanirbhar app for India and the world

Javagal Srinath, former Indian cricketer and fast bowler said, "I am very happy to be backing Koo — one of India's most talked-about social media platforms. The fact that they are building a platform to bring the voices of Indian language audiences onto the internet is commendable, and as an Indian, I extend my support to them wholeheartedly."

Billed as India's alternative to Twitter, the Koo app won second place in the Aatmanirbhar App Challenge announced by the Indian government. It was also named Google PlayStore’s Best Daily Essential App for 2020, and got a special mention by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his Mann Ki Baat address.

The startup had also raised a funding of $4.1 million, which will be used to ramp up capabilities to solve uniquely Indian engineering challenges, and for marketing to increase awareness about the app. The app currently has over one million downloads on Google Play Store. In a tweet, Aprameya also said that 95 percent of Koo's users log in through their mobile phones.