- ByStartupStory | April 26, 2024
Koo, the social media platform renowned for its focus on regional Indian languages, has announced the suspension of salary payments to its employees due to severe financial constraints. The decision, effective from April, was made public by Mayank Bidawatka, co-founder of Koo, through a detailed post on LinkedIn.
According to Bidawatka, the company has been pushed to this drastic measure as it scrambles to secure additional investment or find a buyer to ensure its continued operation. “We have done everything to extend our runway so that employees and vendors could get paid. We’ve also resorted to salary cuts. It’s painful to cut salaries of people who’ve helped build the company,” he wrote. The co-founder also highlighted the difficult choice the company faced: “We had the option of either letting a good part of the workforce go or do a haircut for everyone. We did the latter. This way everyone could sustain without having to look for a job at a time when hiring across startups is at its all-time low.”
The backdrop of this crisis is a broader investment slowdown, affecting many startups worldwide. Bidawatka explained that all discussions regarding investment or acquisition have been temporarily suspended due to the ongoing ‘funding winter,’ a term used to describe the current investment climate.
Koo, which was launched in 2020 by Aprameya Radhakrishna and Mayank Bidawatka, has been a prominent player in India’s social media landscape, particularly appealing to users preferring content in Indian languages. The platform has attracted significant funding from major venture capital firms including Tiger Global, Accel Partners, Kalaari Capital, and 3one4 Capital.
Despite the financial hurdles, Koo’s management is exploring strategic partnerships to boost the platform’s reach and user base. “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,” Bidawatka mentioned in a previous statement.
There have been speculations about potential acquisition talks with Dailyhunt, another major player in the content aggregation space, which reportedly boasts over 350 million monthly active users as of FY22.
