Koo gains. Koo gains on Twitter-Govt face-off

Sangeetha Chengappa Updated - June 06, 2021 at 10:08 PM.

Downloads 5X up, user engagement 50 per cent more

FILE PHOTO: People holding mobile phones are silhouetted against a backdrop projected with the Twitter logo in this illustration picture taken September 27, 2013. REUTERS/Kacper Pempel/File Photo

Home grown microblogging app Koo which saw a huge spike in downloads following Twitter’s face-off with the Government in February has seen the momentum build after its more recent tiff over complying with the IT rules 2021.

“Overall, our downloads have grown 5X from less than two million in the end of January to 6.5 million at present. We saw a surge in users in February when there was a stand-off between Twitter and the Indian Government. That led to various ministries joining Koo and creating their own following. We witnessed another major user surge recently with Twitter’s non-compliance of new IT rules that were recently introduced. Significantly, our user engagement has increased by 50 per cent” said Aprameya Radhakrishna, co-founder and CEO of Koo.

Nigeria

Koo is already live in 91 countries including India which is the primary market where users can Koo in eight languages and is expected to be live in 22 Indian languages soon.

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The users from 90 countries are primarily Non-Resident Indians who want to be connected to India deeper in their local languages. He said, the company plans to enable Nigerian languages on Koo, in the wake of the recent developments in Nigeria.

Twitter has been indefinitely suspended in Nigeria since Friday, after the social media platform deleted a tweet by Nigerian President Muhammudu Buhari.

“We are already live in Nigeria, but now want to enable local languages of Nigeria on Koo. Nigeria has five local languages spoken by 90 per cent of its population and this will be our first attempt to address the needs of a significant local language population. We will start developing and enabling the country access first and then get to enabling local languages. Since Nigeria does not have a microblogging platform right now, we are trying to enable it in a hurry,” said Radhakrishna.

Published on June 6, 2021 13:51