Social networking app Koo plans on entering the US amid Twitter fiasco: Report

Koo App, a multi-lingual microblogging platform, is harbouring global expansion ambitions looking at the roller-coaster developments at Elon Musk-headed Twitter.

Bengaluru-based Koo is building functions and tools for the platform to appeal to a global audience, and will initially target the US. As part of the development, which was first reported by The Economic Times, the platform will not charge users to get verified and plans on onboarding global leaders.

Apart from the US, Koo is also looking to tap into Indonesia, Bangladesh, Africa and West Asia, Malaysia, and The Philippines.

This comes as Elon Musk rolled out plans for Twitter to charge users to get verified, and then later had to make a temporary U-turn on Twitter Blue as parody accounts created havoc.

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A query sent to Aprameya Radhakrishna, Co-founder and CEO, Koo, did not elicit any response till the publishing of this story.

Aprameya, who co-founded TaxiforSure (acquired by Ola Cabs), started working in the regional language app space after starting Vokal, in 2016, with his former TaxiforSure consultant ​Mayank Bidawatka. While the Quora-like audio question-answering platform attracted a niche crowd, Koo (started in 2020) attracted a larger audience.

The microblogging platform, which operates in Hindi, English, Punjabi, Bangla and Kannada, among 10 Indian languages, took off in 2020. In the midst of over 50 Chinese apps being banned and the number of users coming online shooting up exponentially due to the pandemic-led lockdowns, Koo saw an opportunity to attract many users. Politicians such as Smriti Irani, Nitin Gadkari and Ravi Shankar Prasad, cricketer Virat Kohli, and actor Tiger Shroff, among others, have verified Koo profiles.

A few days ago, Koo also crossed 50 million downloads.