KOO, the desi answer to Twitter, dies down - what went wrong?

Before it could fly, the yellow bird was dead. Government officials gave it initial flight, and while it did gain some early traction in 2021, Koo – India’s answer to X (formerly Twitter) – has shut down, highlighting the existential challenges a company has to overcome in building a successful social networking platform.

For a country that prides itself on being, in many ways, the software capital of the world, a successful global social networking platform has somehow eluded India forever. Koo had first hoped it could change that, but it faced some fundamental issues.

It takes a lot of capital to build a social media platform in a world that is already dominated by such offerings by deep-pocketed big tech platforms from the US. Hiring the right talent, maintaining online systems, and putting together a team of content moderators are some of the obvious cost centers for a social networking platform.

Then there are costs of following regulations in various jurisdictions, which again requires a team of lawyers and policy professionals who could work with various lobby groups to influence regulations. For a small company, that is often a cost they simply can not afford in the building stage, and it is fair to believe that VCs wouldn’t want to bankroll these operations either.

It is also ostensibly argued that making a social media platform is not much of a tech challenge anymore, as it might have been a decade ago. There are enough platforms to take inspiration from – as Koo liberally did from Twitter. The real challenge is to offer users an alternative that may fulfill a need that isn’t already being met by another, more thriving platform.