Koo, India’s Twitter alternative, lays off 30% of workforce

Indian microblogging platform Koo has terminated almost a third of its employees due to financial losses and difficulty in raising funds. Koo, which has been vying with Twitter for market share in India, let go of around 30 per cent of its staff, consisting of approximately 260 workers, as it struggles with proving unit economics.

A spokesperson for Koo said, "Like most startups, Koo also built in a workforce to account for spikes. Given the current market environment and external realities of a global slowdown, we get affected too."

Koo has announced that the laid-off employees have been offered compensation packages, extended health benefits and aid in finding new jobs. 

Koo, in a statement said, "Some of the most profitable companies in the world have shed tens of 1000s of jobs. We are a young startup with a long way ahead of us. The global sentiment right now is more focused on efficiency than growth and businesses need to work towards proving unit economics."

The spokesperson further added, "It's important for businesses of all sizes to adopt efficient and conservative approaches to see this period through. In line with this, we have acted on some role redundancies by letting go of 30% of our workforce over the course of the year and have supported them through compensation packages, extended health benefits and outplacement services."

Koo was founded three years ago and has gained popularity as a homegrown alternative to Twitter. Despite the challenges, Koo plans to continue operating and will now focus on maximizing efficiency.

Twitter, Koo's direct rival underwent massive changes after Elon Musk's takeover. Ironically, in November last year, Koo co-founder Mayank Bidawatka said he was willing to hire ex-Twitter employees as #RIPTwitter trend took hold in Twitter trends.

In his tweet he said, “Very sad to see #RIPTwitter and related # to this going down. We'll hire some of these Twitter ex-employees as we keep expanding and raise our larger, next round. They deserve to work where their talent is valued. Micro-blogging is about people power. Not suppression.”

Also read: Twitter-rival Koo offers free lifetime verification to 'notable' personalities; details here

Koo recently also claimed that it had 60 million downloads. The “well capitalized"  company is also looking to become profitable. Co-founder Mayank Bidawatka claimed that the company has one of the highest revenue per user among other social media companies.

Also read: ChatGPT makes debut with Twitter-rival Koo to write posts for you