Govt responds to Twitter blogpost — on homegrown app Koo

AFTER TWITTER put out its blogpost on Wednesday, the Union Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology’s first response was on Koo, a homegrown microblogging platform.
In a koo – time period for a publish on the platform – the ministry mentioned the IT Secretary was to “engage with” senior officers of Twitter, “upon the request of Twitter” and a blogpost “prior to this engagement is unusual”.
More than half-an-hour later, the ministry tweeted the identical textual content from its official Twitter deal with.
The Centre’s concerted push for the year-old Koo app, at a time when it’s embroiled in a kerfuffle with Twitter, has trade insiders suggesting that the federal government is placing its weight behind a neighborhood different. Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal and several other authorities departments have joined Koo amid the government-Twitter row.
The app’s co-founder and CEO Aprameya Radhakrishna informed The Indian Express that the app witnessed an surprising surge in downloads and that almost half of its 3 million downloads have occurred prior to now 30-40 days. On Wednesday, the app additionally witnessed crashes because of the excessive hundreds. “We are doing our best to stabilise Koo App platform. Due to unprecedented demand, our servers are not able to handle all the load, and we are working 24/7 to add more servers. Our priority is to use India-based servers only,” the app’s official account posted on Twitter.

While Law & IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad was among the many few outstanding personalities to have joined Koo in August 2020, when it received the AatmaNirbhar Bharat App Innovation Challenge, a clutch of presidency departments and senior authorities officers joined the platform this month, in response to info displayed on their particular person Koo pages. These embrace the Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology, India Post, the Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs, Niti Aayog, and several other IT ministry divisions like Digital India, Electronics India, Common Service Centre and so forth.

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Among others on Koo are MP Tejasvi Surya, Karnataka Chief Minister B S Yediyurappa, Isha Foundation’s Sadhguru, former cricketers Javagal Srinath and Anil Kumble. Actor Anupam Kher joined the app on Wednesday.
Run by Bengaluru-based Bombinate Technologies Pvt Ltd, Koo was launched on Google Play Store in November 2019, and was launched to the general public in early 2020. In August final yr, it was among the many winners of the AatmaNirbhar Bharat App Innovation Challenge, which the federal government introduced quickly after banning a rating of cellular apps with Chinese hyperlinks.
Bombinate Technologies additionally runs Vokal, a neighborhood model of the favored on-line question-and-answer platform Quora. According to information sourced from Crunchbase, the corporate has raised funding from buyers like Blume Ventures, Kalaari Capital, Accel India and others. Among its buyers is Chinese enterprise capital agency Shunwei Capital but it surely was in means of promoting its stake within the firm.
“Koo is an Indian registered company with Indian founders. Raised capital two-and-a-half years ago. Latest funds for Bombinate Technologies is led by a truly Indian investor 3one4 Capital. Shunwei (single-digit shareholder) which had invested in our Vokal journey will be exiting fully,” the CEO mentioned.

Koo was co-founded by entrepreneurs Aprameya Radhakrishna and Mayank Bidwatka. The former had earlier based on-line cab reserving service TaxiForSure, which was later offered to Ola Cabs.
In the most recent spherical of funding introduced earlier this month, Bombinate Technologies raised funding from present buyers and added a brand new title — former Infosys CFO TV Mohandas Pai’s 3one4 Capital – to the checklist.
The authorities’s try to push a Made-in-India social networking app is consistent with sure quarters the world over searching for a substitute for Twitter.