India’s alternative app to Twitter Inc, which is Koo, has finally surged past 10 million users of the app, and thus it narrowed the gap with Twitter Inc, which is the US microblogging site. Twitter had a lot of clashes with the government over the past few months and at this time, India’s app Koo has reached a higher success in just 16 months!
This 16-month-old app Koo has features similar to Twitter but also contains some additional features which make it better than the microblogging site, Twitter. This app allows all the users to send or we can say, share tweets in English and also in other 7 languages such as Hindi and Kannada. Now, this app has noted that about 85% of its users have joined since February, and during February Twitter had some dispute with PM Modi and the government. Since, all the famous personalities, including ministers, opposition politicians, Bollywood celebrities, and all the cricketers have started sharing their first in Indian languages on Koo.
Its San Francisco rival which recorded 17.5 million users monthly earlier this year in India has now compiled with the new government rules this month and has also appointed some new India-based executives from which one can also handle compliance.
The co-founder and chief executive officer of the Bangalore headquartered app, Aprameya Radhakrishna also shared how Twitter clashes with the government have highlighted the Koo app, and how their plan to add mother tongue in the app has benefited them. He said, “We came into the LimeLight because of Twitter’s tension with the government but users soon realize that they can express in their mother tongue only on Koo.” He further said, “Our app connects English-speaking Indians to non-English speaking Indians in a country with 700 million internet users and that’s powerful.”
Sure to say that recently we have come across many incidents where the American social media network, that is the microblogging site Twitter, has repeatedly clashed with the government over the content on its platform. The first clash took place when Twitter resisted removing hundreds of posts that were critical of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government’s handling of the covid-19 crisis. Then, Twitter started labeling all the posts by the ruling party officials as misleading. As the clashes were going on a court also ruled that Twitter was in “total non-compliance” with the new information technology rules of the country. There are also tussles taking place between the social media giants like Facebook Inc, WhatsApp, and authorities, over India’s new information technology or internet rules which continue in the court.
But earlier this month Twitter told the court that now they are fully complying with the new information technology rules of the country. They also included naming an Indian-based point person for handling grievance issues and compliance. But it is sure that the Indian app Koo is becoming successful and has also benefited from the controversies and also including the first-time internet users who post in local languages. Mr. Radhakrishna also said that they are targeting a hundred million users in a year. And now these startup plans are going to be expanded in Southeast Asia, Africa, South America, and eastern Europe. The main target is to spread this app to countries where English is not the dominant language. Mr. Radhakrishnan also said about how he feels when an Indian social media startup is becoming successful and taking over a global giant. He said, “An Indian social media startup is taking on a global giant and has a very good chance of winning.”
