The "KOO" is dead

While Koo (the Indian version of Twitter) shut down, I'm surprised with the reasons given by a serial entrepreneur! I was first making this into a post & then I realised there are just too many lessons to learn here!

First, this is what the founder said. And I quote: 

"Building ambitious, world-beating products from India in fields like social media, AI, space, or EV requires patient, long-term capital. When competing against global giants, substantial capital is necessary. These are long-term investments, not profit machines to be churned in two years. We hope to see this long-term perspective for significant Indian ventures."

You remember I said 'serial founder'? I'm building my third startup, had tried raising money in my second venture - unsuccessfully - and then never ever went to raise funding! In fact just recently, a VC firm approached us & my co-founder, Arpita Bose immediately said "No."

So let's look at his first venture. TaxiForSure. 

He operated that for 4 years from 2011-15, before selling to Ola. It started with an investment of Rs 8 lakhs and grew to a size where it had a turnover of Rs 1,200 crores. They claim ~4 million rides. 

So why did they sell out? 

Following the 2014 Uber rape case in Delhi, TaxiForSure’s founders, Aprameya Radhakrishna and Raghunandan, were compelled to make the difficult decision to sell the company to its competitor, Ola cabs, for $200 million. (Source: StartupToEnterprise)

Damn.. $200 mn. So what did he do next? He became an "angel investor". Makes sense.. like Sachin Bansal after selling Flipkart. 

Not really. What was Aprameya's average ticket size?

4-10 lakhs. :P 

(That in my mind speaks volumes on his expectations of a multifold return on his investment!) 

Anyway, back to Koo. 

They claim they were just a few months away from being India's Twitter. 

Look at this rebranding that they did. 

Seriously!! Spending a whole tonne of money for this?? It's supposedly an App made by India, for India. Where's the Indian flag then? There are a tonne of ways you can depict that .. maybe even the tuft of feathers from the head! But you need to be clear on your USP, right?

I consult a whole tonne of startups, so this comment from Anurag is a slam-dunk. 

“One of the biggest questions for any Indian content player is how much money can they make from a non-metro, non-English-speaking user?” Anurag Ramdasan, a partner at early-stage VC firm 3one4 Capital, told Rest of World. “It’s just a very tough business.”

They are a social media app, right? So they must've had a robust influencer strategy!

The only influencers they wanted were Kangana Ranaut, Narendra Modi, Amit Shah, cabinet ministers etc. While it may sound good on paper, let me tell you the obvious challenge. 

POLITICIANS AREN'T INFLUENCERS!!! 

I mean, of course, Modi coming in and saying "Download Koo", will drive India crazy.. but it's not on downloads. Social media works on people coming back to the platform every day, multiple times! 

And think abut it.. do you think Modi will stop posting on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook.. and post exclusively on Koo!! Even if he does, how many people would be logging in 10 times a day to see what he's saying. And if that person does.. do you really think he'll be interested in buying mobile cases (ads)?

Building a social media app is a very different ball game. We have 5k followers on LinkedIn, 15k on Instagram & 9k on YouTube. Each of these are different. 

There's a reason that Google+ failed. 

There's an equally big reason that TikTok worked. 

There's a reason that Microsoft, IBM & Oracle can't ever do social media apps the justice they deserve. 

It was obvious that Koo would fail. It was a matter of whether they'll be able to offload the debt and burden on someone else. Thankfully they couldn't.