Chinese investor Shunwei Capital exits Koo, the desi alternative for Twitter
1 min read 17 Mar 2021, 04:37 PM ISTExisting investors and a bunch of individuals bought out Shunwei’s stake in Bombinate Technologies Private Limited, which is the parent company of Koo and Vokal
PremiumNEW DELHI : Homegrown Twitter alternative, Koo, announced that Chinese investor Shunwei Capital has sold its minority stake in the company. The company said existing investors and a bunch of individuals bought out Shunwei’s stake in Bombinate Technologies Private Limited, which is the parent company of Koo and Vokal.
The new investors include former cricketer Javagal Srinath, BookMyShow founder Ashish Hemrajani, Udaan co-founder Sujeet Kumar, Flipkart CEO Kalyan Krishnamurthy and Zerodha founder Nikhil Kamat. Shunwei Capital held a 9% stake in the company and the company had said in the past that it was in the process of exiting the business.
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“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 when we were raising funds for Vokal, and have now fully exited the parent company Bombinate Technologies," said Aprameya Radhakrishna, chief executive officer (CEO) and co-founder of Koo.
The homegrown microblogging platform had capitalized on Twitter’s recent spat with the Indian government, gaining many new users over the past month or so. Koo gained millions of new users after the spat, on the back of Union Ministers and other high-profile personalities setting up their accounts on the platform. The app had crossed 4.2 million users on February 17, with web traffic growing almost 70 times, Koo’s co-founder Mayank Bidawatka had said earlier. The founders have said they want to reach 100 million users by the end of 2021.
Ministers Ravi Shankar Prasad and Prakash Javadekar, and various celebrities have joined the platform. The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), MyGov, India Post and the National Informatics Centre, have all created official accounts on Koo as well. The app had also been amongst the winners of the Aatmanirbhar App Challenge announced by the Indian government last year.
