New Delhi: Indian microblogging platform Koo, which was seen as India’s local alternative to Twitter (now X), is shutting down. Koo founder Aprameya Radhakrishna has confirmed the development via a LinkedIn post.

The company claims that the four-year-old startup Koo is shutting down its service after acquisition talks with the online media firm Dailyhunt failed. Notably, the social media startup was launched as a homegrown alternative to X and was promoted extensively by celebrities and ministers.

The Koo co-founders, Aprameya Radhakrishna and Mayank Bidawatka, said in a LinkedIn post on July 3, “We explored partnerships with multiple larger internet companies, conglomerates, and media houses, but these talks didn’t yield the outcome we wanted. Most of them didn’t want to deal with user-generated content and the wild nature of a social media company.”

The founders further mentioned that “a couple of them changed priority almost close to signing. While we would’ve liked to keep the app running, the cost of technology services to keep a social media app running is high and we’ve had to take this tough decision”. 

The company was founded by entrepreneurs Aprameya Radhakrishna and Mayank Bidawatka in 2020. Notably, it was the first Indian microblogging site available in over 10 languages. The app featured a yellow bird as its logo and garnered nearly 60 million downloads since its launch.

The social media app Koo was started by Radhakrishna and Bidawatka in 2019 and was launched in March 2020.