Twitter rival Koo lays off 15 employees in 'realignment' move

New Delhi: India-based social blogging platform Koo has laid off at least 15 people, mostly from its operations and backend teams, and the micro-blogging platform said on Thursday that it is realigning its workforce to the current business requirements".

Koo said in a statement that only 15 positions or a mere 5% of the total workforce have been made redundant or removed due to performance issues. This is completely aligned with the industry standards of hiring and retrenchment. At the same time, Koo continues to hire talent in its monetisation, product and engineering teams. The additional hires will help the company gear up for the next phase of growth and monetisation, which the company has already announced. A Koo spokesperson told IANS that the platform is at a phase of rapid growth as it steers digital inclusion for native language speakers.

“ Koo has raised $44.1 Mn so far.  Around $4.1 million was raised in a series A round, followed by $30 million in a series B round led by Tiger Global, which also had participation by early stage investors like Accel, Kalaari Capital, Blume Ventures and Dream incubator. In Feb 2022, Koo raised another $10 million through Indian family offices. The company is well capitalized, is focused on growth and enhancing innovation, driving digital inclusion and attaining 100 million downloads," said the spokesperson.

Clarifying Aprameya Radhakrishna, Co-founder and CEO, Koo's visit in London, the spokesperson said that he was there for an industry event for Indian entrepreneurs (including a meeting with the British PM), which was also attended by the Hon’ble Minister of State Shri Rajeev Chandrashekhar. Radhakrishna did not meet any funders or HNIs in London and did not engage in any fundraising activity

Koo, which is aiming to reach the 100 million-download mark, said that it continues to “recruit talent especially as far as engineering and machine learning teams are concerned".

“Our workforce is streamlined to ensure it is aligned to the current business requirements. As a people-first company, we appreciate the talent and contributions of each of our associates," the spokesperson added.

Launched in March 2020, Koo is currently available in 10 languages — Hindi, Marathi, Gujarati, Punjabi, Kannada, Tamil, Telugu, Assamese, Bengali and English.

According to the platform, it has over 45 million downloads and is actively leveraged by 7,000 high-profile people from across the spectrum.

In February this year, Koo raised nearly $10 million in two different trances from multiple investors.

The investors included Capsier Venture Partner, Ravi Modi Family Trust, Ashneer Grover, FBC Venture Partners, Adventz Finance etc, according to regulatory filings.

Last year, Koo raised its Series B funding from Tiger Global, Accel Partners, and Blume Ventures.