New Delhi: The home-grown ‘Koo’ app, has gained considerable popularity in India as the government and Twitter are engaged in a standoff. What is not known however is that the makers of ‘Koo’ have a Chinese investor among them. Chinese investor Shunwei Capital is a small stakeholder of the company at present. However, co-founder of the Koo app Aprameya Radhakrishna has said the Chinese investor’s stakes are being bought by other companies. Aprameya Radhakrishna tweeted Thursday to give this information after users of the Koo app questioned its Chinese connection.
Koo is an India registered company with Indian founders. Radhakrishna said that Shunwei (single digit shareholder) which had invested in ‘our Vokal journey will be exiting fully’ in a tweet.
The co-founder also informed that Koo has recently raised about Rs 30 crore fund from a clutch of investors, including ‘3one4Capital’. It is backed by former Infosys CFO Mohandas Pai.
The new app saw a huge load in the past few days in what is being called as ‘Koo coup’. “We have got more love than we expected. Our systems are facing more load than ever. Thank you for placing your trust in us. Our team is working on overdrive to fix it. We request your patience and support through this time,” Radhakrishna tweeted.
‘Koo’ was founded in March 2020 by Radhakrishna and Mayank Bidawatka. It was one of the winners of Aatmanirbhar App challenge 2020.
It should be stated here that in the last couple of days since the government’s standoff began with Twitter, a number of politicians have switched over to Koo. Among them are Railways Minister Piyush Goyal and BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra. It remains to be seen what Prime Minister Narendra Modi does as his Twitter account has millions of followers. Modi also tweets regularly his comments on a number of issues and developmental projects.