Koo to either raise funds or partner with another player to build scale, says co-founder

economictimes.indiatimes.com:

Koo co-founder Mayank Bidawatka on Friday said that the next phase for the startup is to build scale, either with funding, or through a strategic partnership with a player that has already achieved it.

“With the current reality of a slow investor market, the best way forward is to partner with someone who has the distribution strength to give Koo a massive user impetus and help it grow. With a platform that's scale ready, Koo can outshine competitors with the right push on growth,” he said in a LinkedIn post.

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The Bengaluru-based firm had to move from growing rapidly to cutting down on growth and proving unit economics, all within six months of revenue experimentation, he added.

In his post Bidawatka, explained that Koo had to take a 180-degree turn, with an unfavourable market playing out. “We still believe that a microblog built for the native language speakers is the most inclusive way to take microblogging to the larger world. 80% of the world speaks a native language, other than English, and they too deserve a language first platform to express themselves and connect better,” he said.

Bidawatka said Koo’s initial “stable state” plan was to scale more before generating revenue, but it got caught in “sour market timing” and had to switch gears from a growth trajectory to a revenue-generating engine. “With just 6 months more on our trajectory, we would have beaten Twitter in India,” he said.